Surfing Waves

Went out the other day with a group of 8-12 surfers, and as I was gettin my stuff ready this guy walked past with what LOOKED like a minimal, with a single fin on it.

Im SURE it was a minimal, definitely not long enough to be a full sized mal.

I was going to ask him why he was only using one fin but he went off into the sea and I didnt see him to talk to for the rest of the session.

He seemed to be able to ride it well, and was carving nice turns n stuff with it????


from Confused

Er... why shouldnt a mini-mal have a single fin?

Thats what I'm asking!!!

Ive only really seen them with tri-fins?????

im sure it was a tri fin but he was just using one....how big was the swell that day?

hmmm not huge, about waist high - maybe a bit smaller

sure it wasnt a magic carpet

basicly the same shape as a mal but alot shorter

Mini-mals, particularly pop-outs, are usually set up with a tri-fin set up as this is the easiest to learn on (fairly stable, will turn but wont spin out, has got some drive) but there's no reason they have to be set up like that.

Like anything else in surfing, what someone prefers is what they ought to surf

A mini-mal with a single longboard fin will surf like a small longboard (which'd be good on waist high days), or would get interestingly loose and skatey if it was a smaller thruster-type fin

I've got a project i dug out of the campsite storage barn.. its about 7ft about a good 12cm+ thick at its thickest point!! It too is a single fin. Its dated around the mid 80's from what I can tell. Needs a bit of work on the nose but it'll be a nice little earner. I'll see if i've got any pics when I get back to Bangor.

i was thinkin the same thing as drowning, just someone havin fun in smaller surf.