Thruster V Single Fin

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Johnno
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Thruster V Single Fin

Post by Johnno » Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:04 am

Now having riden both, their/there ( will need spell check and grammer to go over this :wink:) is a difference in feel / performance between the two.

A few weeks ago their/there was a contest with some footage shown on the local news. I think it was a Burleigh Heads ( is that a secret spot :lol: ) and they had to ride single fins, even had Kong out amongst it.

The surfing seem a bit slower but maneuvers performed by some of the younger enterants where pretty much on par to riding a thruster and it was good to see.

Yes, thrusters have speed and are quicker to turn with less effort , but the art of riding a single fin from my limited experience is that rails ( wheres fong :wink: :lol: ) play a lot more of a roll in turns, your more reliant on it. In that it is easier to dig rails on a single fin if you amp out a bit where as a thruster seems a little bit more forgiving.

Then with the single fin it is a lot easier to have the fin come out of the water and the next thing is, you are side slipping, which is not always a good thing.

More effort is required to build speed and maintain it on a single fin, in that you have to work the board more on the wave face and not just pump it.

So I would like to ask has riding a thruster made surfing easier on short/ mal boards, and is this a good thing as some ppl if they didn't get the hang of it as quickly, would drop out of surfing ........... :?:

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Post by collnarra » Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:44 am

THis sounds like a job for Nick Carroll.

I suspect, Johnno, that what you were seeing at Burleigh (oops! sorry, secret spot), was more a reflection on the quality and ability of the surfers than on the boards themselves.

There's no doubt that thrusters have made surfing easier; as have shorter, lighter boards. Check out what hot grom surfers are doing now compared to even a decade ago... and then back in the 1970s, it wasn't really possible to be a hot, lightweight grom because they didn't have the strength and power.

that's all changed.

as to whether mandatory singles for learners would lead to a crowd reduction, well that's really a philosophical question, isn't it?

:)

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Post by Laurie McGinness » Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:02 am

The big difference in my judgement is that single fins give you one chance to pick the right line into a turn, once you're on the rail there are very limited options. Thrusters allow almost continuous adjustment. One of the key design problems with single fins was getting enough tail area for optimum planing without causing the fin to break out in a bottom turn. This is a non-issue with thrusters. The current retro fad is just that - but I thught that about mals too and look what happened there. maybe half the surfing population will go back to single fins, personally I'd rather surf with a small anchor on the back of my thruster!

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Post by Waterman » Mon Jan 30, 2006 11:39 am

I ride both single fins and thrusters, nothing to do with so called fads,
I dont give a rats what other people ride.
I just like the way a single fin goes in certain waves.
The way they take off, the slower arcs, turning of the rails and the way they paddle faster.
It may be slow in dead sections though, very dead.
One of them actually is quite hard to get going again if you drive to hard up the face, with a latish reo etc.
Although every one of my singles rides differently to eachother.

I like one of my sigles on a certain shallow left ledge when it occasionally works well, because the wave is powerful but a slow series of barrells.
With my red single i find it easier to line up sections and barrells without going to fast, drawing clean straighten out bottom turns, not needing to stall, like i would with a thruster.
It just feels better, cleaner and smoother.
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Post by tootr » Mon Jan 30, 2006 12:54 pm

IMO there's no doubt the thruster is the most versatile fin configuration, but I do wonder if some people should give other simpler designs a try..

reason being there seems to be so many reasonable standard surfers, who probably learnt everything on refined thrusters, doing powerless 'flick and jab' turns off the back foot, not to mention quite average bottom turns and jerky manuveres

a month or so on a single fin might help smooth that out maybe??

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Post by Laurie McGinness » Mon Jan 30, 2006 1:42 pm

a month or so on a single fin might help smooth that out maybe??
tootr I think you can probably get the same effect by riding a slightly longer thruster. It's not a cure all but it gets you thinking about the lines you're taking.

Waterman, single fins may not be a fad for you but I'm calling it that way since the number in the water has tripled in the last couple of years and I can't see any performance benefit at all. I surfed singles all the way from mals to the first thrusters and there is no way I would go back to one - too many limitations!

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Post by collnarra » Mon Jan 30, 2006 1:59 pm

OK, since we're talking Old Skool designs, what about Bonzers then?

Image

actually, the entire site is worth a look:

http://surfysurfy.blogspot.com

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Post by Shaunm » Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:31 pm

See Mal riders only forum
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Post by cousteau » Mon Jan 30, 2006 2:38 pm

i came to surfing late in life at 25 am 33 now and i learnt on a thruster.
It took me about 6 or 7 years to go ok im not ever gonna be snap after snap and throwin massive rooster tails down the line.I eventually got so over catchin rails and generally not progressing with a standard thruster.
So I buy a beautiful little single fin 6"1" fat and chunky and I have never looked back,i've got the morning of the earth soundtrack on high rotation in my head as you pull such lovely drawn out bottom turns and swing back up the face.In short they rock,more people should give 'em a go,it revolutionised my surfing without a doubt, iwould never go back.

Furthermore... i love the whole skip frye fish thing too,which i get a lot of grief for how it's so bad for your surfing etc.On a 1 to 2 foot day how can you possibly go past them so much speed and ease of getting into waves i would get twice the waves and travel twice as far my thruster brethren.

Anyhoo works for me

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Post by collnarra » Mon Jan 30, 2006 3:25 pm

Rockin' Ron wrote:Do moderators get to hijack threads with impunity? Talk about drawing a long bow. A history lesson on bonzers.....woo hoo....
ah, it's not a history lesson. If you'd actually looked, rather than crybabied, you'd know that.

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Post by mad » Mon Jan 30, 2006 7:57 pm

I was chatting to my shaper the other week about getting a new board. Unfortunately we're both old enough to have started on single fins :roll:

We were just bullshitting about shapes etc, and I quizzed him about single fins, and he just scoffed and said why would ya when thrusters do so much more and are a superior surf craft.

Left it at that and I reckon that's the bottom line between the two.

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Post by Beanpole » Mon Jan 30, 2006 9:53 pm

tootr wrote:IMO there's no doubt the thruster is the most versatile fin configuration, but I do wonder if some people should give other simpler designs a try..

reason being there seems to be so many reasonable standard surfers, who probably learnt everything on refined thrusters, doing powerless 'flick and jab' turns off the back foot, not to mention quite average bottom turns and jerky manuveres

a month or so on a single fin might help smooth that out maybe??
I couldn't agree more. If you have surfed single fins and you know their limitation, fine. A lot of surfers look ugly on a thruster because they don't have the rhythm to put all their moves together. They just get more frenetic as the wave intensifies until they fall off or get drilled.

fong

Post by fong » Tue Jan 31, 2006 1:03 am

alot surfers do look VERY ugly on a 3 fin (pump...pump :P )

even a few of the better pros...can really ruin a wave in the 1st 5 seconds :shock: make u turn away (1st impressions are lasting :shock: )

i learnt on thuster....and love it to bits...and recken simion anderson should b aussie of the year...each year...4 inventing it :lol:

but single fins go good.....they are very drivey if the RAILS :roll: are right

i'd like to explore the bonzer concept in a board.....but theres only so many boards a fong can afford :cry:

just to hijack dunnos thread....singles v thuster in big wave designs :?:

i recken there equal.....with mayb the single more suited to the drawn out pin tail :?

p.s a singlefin pintail....is the best learners board in world :!:

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Post by Laurie McGinness » Tue Jan 31, 2006 8:10 am

You see a lot of bad surfing on thrusters but the question is really would they be any better on singles and the answer I think is No. That said I get the impression that a lot of people are riding boards that are either badly designed or unsuited to their needs. This is not so much a length issue as a plan shape/rocker thing. If you haven't got the skill to really hit power turns in small waves it is easy to end up riding a board with too much curve in the last third so that you waddle around from rail to rail without generating any speed or power.

Related to this is the specialised nature of many boards - that is they are designed for a particular size range and do not perform well out of that range. OK for those of us with a quiver but a lot of younger surfers still have one board...and very often it's less than optimal for the range of waves they are trying to ride.

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Post by tootr » Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:31 pm

Laurie McGinness wrote:You see a lot of bad surfing on thrusters but the question is really would they be any better on singles and the answer I think is No. That said I get the impression that a lot of people are riding boards that are either badly designed or unsuited to their needs. This is not so much a length issue as a plan shape/rocker thing. If you haven't got the skill to really hit power turns in small waves it is easy to end up riding a board with too much curve in the last third so that you waddle around from rail to rail without generating any speed or power.

Related to this is the specialised nature of many boards - that is they are designed for a particular size range and do not perform well out of that range. OK for those of us with a quiver but a lot of younger surfers still have one board...and very often it's less than optimal for the range of waves they are trying to ride.
Good points Laurie. I guess Joe Bloggs needs to be convinced (or accept reality he ain't in the Top 5%) he needs a boards designed for Joe Bloggs rather than Kelly/Andy/Taj/KrappyKrawler :wink:

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Post by Clif » Tue Jan 31, 2006 1:18 pm

i am a bad surfer on a thruster.

should i go to a single fin to smooth out my style *shrug*

nah, I'll just keep tellin' myself i'm rippin' as i wriggle to shore once again.

it's all in how you delude yourself :idea:

which is why slater's in trouble next year if i have anything to do with it :wink:

(single fins LOOK cool though. especially with aviators and jeans. heeeeeyyyyy baaaaaabby! *wink*

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Post by Johnno » Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:30 am

Well first up ladies thanks for the input to date and and agree with most of what you have expressed so far.

Yes, talented young guns are doing some amazing things on thrusters. But as has been pointed out they would fall into the minority, and a few from around these parts that I have watched grow up started riding single fins first as they would knock off their old mans board that he didn't use to start surfing on, and are now the stand outs in the crowd.

I think that a single fin does give you more of a feel for a wave and would improve one's style of how to surf. This would be from the fact that you start to drive the board using your legs rather than flick it about using their hips on a thruster with some looking like they are riding a skate board.

Also you would learn how to surf using the rail more on take-offs when surfing on steep sucky waves.

You would remember Laurie just how important that would be in the old days out the point, when taking off side ways, sometimes it was only the rail that was catching the wall.

Agree with you Rockin Ron, plus you also have a smaller margin for error on a single fin but once you have mastered how a single fin performs you can then transfer that back to a thruster with improved results.

Another good point you brought up Rockin Ron was the equipment that some are using is not suitable for their skill level or body size, and seems more of a fashion accessory for the beach.

And Col, as to whether mandatory singles for learners would lead to a crowd reduction, well that's really a philosophical question, isn't it?

Well yes but in the age that we live in, some would lose interest if it was going to take a a year or so rather than a few months to master or think they have mastered it.

As for bonzers puffffffffffffffffffff........................ :arrow:
More like training wheels on a pushie.................:wink: :lol:

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Post by offshore1 » Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:32 am

Good morning Johnno, :D you're up early, as usual.
IMHO, having started on single fin longboards; moving through the Nat inspired shortboard, V-Bottom revolution of the late 60's; twin fins of the 70's; Simon A's thrusters of the 80's; resurgence of performance longboards in the 90's; and now the "retro-revolution, my feeling is that it's getting better all the time[trouble is, I'm getting older :evil: ].
So much has been learned about rocker (especially tail rocker), fin placement, bottom contours and yes, Fong, even rails, in the last 50 years that pretty much any board put out by a reputable name today will deliver performance.
That being said, in most cases, I prefer the thruster set-up, for two reasons in particular: one; you mention the importance of rail hold in a late take off situation, I find the thruster inside fin has saved me more times than I can count, and
Two; the very name implies the effect a good, hard torquey(sp) turn creates, namely a burst of speed, or thrust off a driving turn, fewer spin-outs(maybe that's # 3), a more positive connection to the water, not skating across the top of it like the way a twin fin feels.

This begs the question: how about the four fin set ups that "Stretch"(can't remember his last name) and his Santa Cruz/Mavericks/Nathan Fletcher crew are bringing to the table?
Like I say, I like it all, and have a decent little quiver, amassed over the years :wink: . Don't have a four fin yet, though.
As was stated earlier, most board problems can be traced to the wrong equipment for the conditions, usually too short, narrow and thin for mushy slop unless you're a super freak like Fanning, Taj or Slater. The wisdom of those old single fins (I still have one), was massive thickness in the chest area for float.

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