Surfing Waves

I recently got a second-hand board at a really good price as I wanted to add another selection to the quiver.
Been surfing for the last 2 years 3-5 times a week 2-5ft beach breaks, I have progressed from a 7ft Mal > 6.4" thruster > 6" funboard.
All my current boards have a thruster setup as it feels most natural to me.

New board 6" x 20" x 2 3/8 roughly 31L, Five fin Setup
Is there any benefit to leaving this as a 5 five or should I just move to a thruster/quad?



Thanks

The 5 boxes are for mixing and matching. Quad, thruster, twin, 2+1 though I’ve seen (own) small trailers that can be added to some configs as well. I would guess surfing with 5 fins being a thruster and quad trailers would be hard to paddle, would drag and track but the easiest answer is to invest a half hour and try it out with 5. Nothing like personal experience.

Had a customer bring in a nice Al Merrick board he just recently purchased. He said there's no way to turn it and he wanted to sell it on consignment. Board looked great, deck had no pressures ................... then we turned the board over. All five fins were installed. We asked him if he put all five fins in just so he didn't have to carry the extras while bringing it down to the shop or that was the way he rode it. He said " Yes, I rode it with all five fins ".

Questions:

1) are the two rear fins, smaller than the center fin way at the back ?

2) is that board from Brazil ?

But who knows, you may be ahead of the game.

Geezer wrote:The 5 boxes are for mixing and matching. Quad, thruster, twin, 2+1 though I’ve seen (own) small trailers that can be added to some configs as well. I would guess surfing with 5 fins being a thruster and quad trailers would be hard to paddle, would drag and track but the easiest answer is to invest a half hour and try it out with 5. Nothing like personal experience.

I have taken in our 3 times now in 2-3ft surf with the 5 fins you just race down the face of the wave, Surprisingly I can turn it quite well it really digs in on the bottom cut.
I will test it out as a thruster.

waikikikichan wrote:Questions:

1) are the two rear fins, smaller than the center fin way at the back ?

2) is that board from Brazil ?

1) All 5 fines are the same size more of a 4+1
2) From Australia - NA PAPA

Yeah, try it as a thruster. Do yourself a favor and peel that tail pad off too; it’s positioned too high on the board and is going to encourage/force you to put your feet out of position since you ought to ride a 6’ board off the tail for the most part.

Fin choice seems to be a pretty personal thing I used to surf single fin boards and when thrusters came out I still surfed single fin because no one I saw was doing anything I couldn’t do on a single. Quit surfing and restarted on a thruster. Then bought a board that had 5 fin slots and started using it as a quad. I never noticed any problems with the quad configuration so I kept using it. When I finally got around to trying a thruster again I noticed it had less drive from turns and went back to quads. Maybe if I lost some weight or could find bigger fins for the thruster configuration I might find thrusters which most surfers seem to prefer more acceptable but for now it’s quads. You might find you like 5 fins. Surfing is a very personal experience. It’s all about what works good for you.

I can see the center fin is the FCS AB-2, and suppose the front fins are AB-2s. What you’re using in the rear quad position is a mystery to me. Sort of looks like the old MF fins, but I don’t remember that color way.

What does the rear two fins say ?

shortrider: six (6) fins are even better!