When do you prefer quad/thruster/five fin set up

[JaM71]

I just read it. Thanks mark for the good detailed summary of both boards, food for thought!

[feraldave]

Ill throw myself in to the fray…

i like to think of fins as anchors or draggers for want of a better word.
the less the fin/fins are engaged, the less drag you have..
now riding an Alaia has almost no drag.. fast but no control..
so hear me out..
riding a thruster like a wct surfer has almost only one fin engaged at a time… fast thru-out most of the wave, rail to rail…. in full control.
a lesser skilled surfer benefits from two fins (on a Quad) toward the engaged rail.. i.e. more drag slowing it down enough on the rail to give him more time to balance… we are talking milliseconds response time.. that is what separates pros from lesser surfers is their kinetic response time..
think about each part of the wave and where your fins are relative to the rails and bottom of the board in the water..

why do you think kelly and now the parkos, julians, etc are now riding the quads in faster sucky hollow waves… they interpret it as "more hold" but what actually happening is they slow down their board as soon as the rail fins are engaged and stay a little deeper in the wave.. increasing their speed as soon as they disengage the fins somewhat to shoot out of the seemingly unmakeable on a thruster wave……
so the number of fins and placement is relative to the way your kinetic timing is and the positions you want to be on the wave...

[Slowman]

...lovin my 5 finners atm, ...

...
Only exception a Bushrat carbon flextail, 'cause I really didn't know what set up would work best on it. (turns out a semi conventional four plus tiny trailer nub.)

I have been using a small knub/dart stabiliser with some of my quads to get better directional control. It seems to deliver the best of both worlds quad speed with better vertical capability. It's so small it doesn't seem to slow down due to any extra noticeable drag. I actually think because it is small, the drag it creates is possibly equal to the open plug holes and that is why there is no noticeable difference. However with the wrong quad set it can make the board stiffer. Seems to work best with more upright fins.

What I find is, a board has an ideal fin set up, once you find that, then leave it. Changing fins for different waves is a bit of a fallacy imo.

I've also found once I get the ideal fin set up I just leave it, mostly. One exception; I have a Webber Afterburner that I use TC redlines at the front sides and a 3" trailer and when it gets bigger I put the TC redline trailer in but that was about the extent of it. I haven't been riding it much lately - probably up for sale soon. For smaller days I might take the knub out of a quad but that is usually during an experimentation phase while I'm working the board out.

I like quads + stabilisers for small to medium waves and beyond that a thruster for 6'+. It sort of depends on the waves too and it's also dependent on the board. Some just stink as quads and visa versa. I change boards (which might have a different fin configuration) rather than change the fin config in the same board.

I plan on getting a Tomo Vanguard to try, from what I've seen they go pretty fast as thrusters and seem to be sticky as quads.

[Natho]

Interesting hearing a top shaper talking about quads today. He was saying that he believes that the quad fad (for small waves)...his words... is dieing out fairly quickly and sales of quad small wave boards have dropped right off this season in favour of thrusters. At the same time there is more interest in quads for bigger suckier waves, esp in the barrell. Many of the top pros that come to him for boards are backing up this observation, wanting thrusters for small and medium sized waves, yet they are prepared to experiement with quads for bigger waves and tube riding. He believes that quads a much better suited to bigger hollower waves and not so much to smaller or shorter peaky type waves. What are peoples thoughts? Do you still ride quads in small waves over say a thruster?

[alakaboo]

Very small waves, below knee height, yes. Still on a quad.
For the sorts of waves that thrusters have always performed well in, I've come back around to them.
Got a quad for heavier waves, but when it gets bigger I go to a single. Depends where you surf.

[Nick Carroll]

I have a different take on this now after surfing a bunch of 5plug boards as both three and four fins over a period of nearly two weeks in Indo.

Surf 3-5' most of the time (ie head hi to solid overhead) and wide ranging from beachies to all kinds of reefs.

Without exception, every five plugger that I surfed as both went better as a quad.

Talking to all the designers involved, I think what's happened is that they've just got a lot better at fin positioning and that the shift toward the New Shortboard measurements (ie 5'9" x 19 and a bit x 23/8" or thereabouts) with broader tails and clean low entry double concaves has given them a bit more room to pull the back fin set away and in slightly.

So a fair bit of the old quad down the line only factor has gone, replaced by something that still runs fast but can find more angles off the top and bottom.

Also undoubtedly the available fin sets have improved a lot. The Futures Rasta quad set is v good for example.

So less of an anti five plugger here now. It felt clear to me that in hollower shorter waves you could switch the set back to three and have a more snappy pocket handling board, then on longer more open faced waves, switch to quad and fly down the line while still getting some vertical edges.

That said the two best boards on the trip were a dedicated thruster (wicked high performance outline thumbnail with deep single concave) and a dedicated four fin (5'5" cut off square with deep double conc). So if you know what you're after as a designer and pursue it properly over time, you're prolly going to come up with the best of whatever world.

[Donweather]

Nick, on those five fin setup boards, do you find that the sweet spot for your back foot is further forward when riding them as a quad compared to a thruster?

[Cpt.Caveman]

Interesting theory feraldave, I like it! Recently I started thinking about fins more as a generator of leverage on the water during turns, and from much time spent on finless boards I can totally appreciate how much drag they produce.


I think the debate on all this is so hard without some sort of objective testing on surfing speed. Maybe from video camera timing, e.g. 100 fps and calculate distance traveled each frame. Surfing a board on a certain wave and conditions, swapping for a second and calculating surfing speeds and then comparing.

I think the quad vs thruster debate is a little redundant without taking into account the whole package. Planshape, volume and lift provided by the board and cotours, fin set-up, fin planshape, etc.

I tend to enjoy the sensation of speed, and surf typical Sydney points and beaches a lot, so hybrid fishes with quad fins work really well for me most of the time. If the waves lend towards staying tight to the tocket, I'm leaning towards a typical thruster with a little more volume than a pro's board.

[alakaboo]

I think the main reason for the KS Wavepool company, and the new tour format, is so that Kelly can definitely prove quads are faster and sell more fins.

[Nick Carroll]

Nick, on those five fin setup boards, do you find that the sweet spot for your back foot is further forward when riding them as a quad compared to a thruster?

Nah not necessarily, there's more going on than just the fins.

Speed btw, ha it's all a bit relative, GPS tracking data amassed a coupla years back at the quik and roxy pros showed that the women pros en masse surf faster than the men. A bit of observation shows us why - the girls tend to surf toward the open face, running out of the pocket and doing long cutties back to the foam, thus covering a lot of ground, while the men tend to surf at wave speed vertically in and below the pocket, covering less ground but staying within the critical risk area of the wave.

But there's a caveat. In pure acceleration off the mark and through individual turns the men are way ahead.

I personally think speed is just a part of surfing, not the only part, I love boards that accelerate instantly and freely but it's good if you can stop them too.

[Beanpole]

Are we expecting an in depth run down on these results?
Not taking the p*ss. I enjoyed the last one.