Post
by Nick Carroll » Tue Jun 12, 2012 7:47 pm
I rode single fins from the start of my surfing life, in 1970: a Midget Farrelly Pro Champ styrofoam Coolite with a rubber fin. The board snapped after 3 and a half weeks of pure joy in the Newport shorie. My brother stole the fin and stuck it in his own far shittier Coolite -- step one in a lifetime's bloodcurdling rivalry.
Next was a 5'8" squashtail shaped by Nigel Coates from Avalon. This was what I thought was a second hander from a school friend called Nigel Savage, a kneeboarder (which explained the board's shortness). It wasn't until many year later that I discovered this was the board Nat Young had ridden in the 1970 World Contest final at Johanna Beach in Vicco. Nat came sixth and I surfed the board for a year, only briefly interrupted after my brother and his best mate borrowed it and broke half the tail off in the shorie, and tried to fix it with resin, not realising you also needed hardener.
Next was a 6'0" Bennett, a beautiful round pin bought from one of the great Newport surfers of the time, Mark Tugwood. Mark moved to West Oz and spawned a cool surfing family including daughter Philippa who won a bunch of West Oz contests. The Bennett had a fin well up the board and did insane cutties.
Next was a Richard Feathers pintail, 6'10". Feathers was the Man at Newport at the time. His logo was a seagull feather glassed under the nose. The board was a blue tinted marvel. I was 14 years old, rdiing a 6'10" in the newly created post-1974 Storm Newport sandbars, in fcuken surfing heaven.
Next was a John Brixey 6'10" roundtail, just a little pinched-off roundtail with a spiral vee bottom and a fin well back, basically an adaption of the Timmy Rodgers singlies around at the time, and on this board I learned to surf for real, riding all the big swells of 1975's winter on it, being the first Newy guy to beat Derek Hynd in a contest out the Pool on a clean six to eight foot day, and catching what remains one of the highlight waves of my life on it: a squared up 10-footer out the Pool one day in July that year when I should have gone to school, but couldn't.
I must have had another 20 or so singlies before 1981, maybe more, and a few after -- for Hawaii -- until AB's six channels got the better of me in 1985's winter. The first Thruster I got was a 6'2" TF single flyer pintail; after one surf I was gone. That was early 1982, me always being a slow adopter, having always taken things too seriously to chuck 'em away on the spur of something else...but when I realised what three fins had opened up, I never once thought of going back, and still today out of some 80 or so surf craft, only four of them have one fin: a racing surf ski, a racing paddleboard, a 6'0" semi MP roundnose squashtail made by Stu Kenson from San Diego, and a 9'6" Pat Rawson Waimea gun, which right now is lying on my front deck, wondering if it might be needed tomorrow in this hectic east swell. If not, I'm gonna cut that single fin off it and turn it into a quad for next time.