How Different Fin Configurations Influence the Way We Ride Waves
As the owner of a surf shop, I get the chance to check out a lot of different boards—longboards, shortboards, and alternative designs from a wide range of shapers, in all types of different sizes and construction processes. Some of these boards end up as part of our selection at Hawaiian South Shore, while others are demo boards that we don’t end up stocking, but that are super interesting to me anyway.
After more than two decades and thousands of boards, I still feel like I have a lot to learn about board design and how different boards ride, which is why I am always checking out new ideas, blogs, and informative videos. I recently checked out an interesting video about the different types of fin configurations and how they not only cause boards to ride differently, but also change the way that surfers approach waves. We have an interesting graphic here at the shop that helps explain the differences in fin setups, but I asked Hawaiian South Shore’s resident surf media professional Matt Rode to give us further input on this topic.
I remember years ago, when I first started out as a journalist in the surf industry, I was talking to a legendary world tour competitor and he told me that he could always tell what type of boards and fin configurations people grew up riding based on how they approached waves. In particular, he mentioned how there was a striking difference in how people who grew up on single fins and people who grew up on twins surfed today—even though they are almost all exclusively on thrusters now.
That conversation really stuck with me, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with different fin configurations over the years. It’s pretty common knowledge that twin fins ride different than thrusters or single fins, but I have always been really intrigued with this concept of the fin setups we ride in our formative years influencing how we ride waves for the rest of our lives.
I think there have been a couple of people over the years who have really personified these distinctions—standout surfers from different eras who serve as the quintessential performers for their particular fin setups. (I’m referring to post-Shortboard Revolution, modern high-performance surfing here, as traditional longboarding was obviously a different type of surfing altogether—albeit just as technically impressive.) Shaun Thompson stands out to me for single fins; Mark Richards on twins; Simon Anderson on thrusters; and Taylor Knox on five-fin Bonzers.
Each of these surfers exemplified the high-performance surfing of their era, and their approaches were so clearly influenced by the fin configurations they were riding.
This is a super involved topic, and one that I would be happy to spend hours discussing, but for the sake of brevity I’ll try to break down each type of fin setup and its influence on one’s approach to surfing in a single paragraph.
The single fin is the obvious place to start, as it was the original fin configuration and its influence is still apparent in today’s modern approach to high-performance surfing. The single fin provides a lot of control in the pocket, and naturally takes an noticeable down and up approach—deep turns off the bottom are necessary due to both the presence of the large center fin and the lack of stabilizing side fins, and these bottom turns naturally lead one to redirect up the face. However, because single fins don’t have that release that thrusters do, they aren’t really conducive to vertical snaps. Instead, these boards are all about keeping the rail in the water while turning back down the face, with the bottom turn/top turn rhythm resulting in a sort of “rock-and-roll” approach to riding waves.
Twin fins came next, and they were almost the complete opposite of single fins. Because they lack that big center fin, they not only lack control in the pocket, but also aren’t great at turning deep off the base of the wave. Instead, twins take a skatier, more down-the-line track. This is the result of the additional speed that you get from the configuration, as well as the fact that there’s no stabilizer in the middle to drive the board off the bottom. Twin fins feel a bit tracky down the line, but they also spin out easily if you push them too hard through a turn.
This makes them great for sliding turns, airs, and floaters—all of which are lateral maneuvers that don’t necessarily require a commitment to the rail. However, they can be turned on the rail if they are carved correctly—and, when they are, they tend to hold their line through the arc of the turn and come out of it with a lot of speed, due to the placement of the fins very close to the rail. Perhaps the most interesting thing about twin fins is that they seem to do best when they aren’t over-surfed—which is the complete opposite of thrusters. Twins almost invite you to come along for the ride, rather than telling them where they want you to go.
Thrusters are surfing’s great compromise—speed and drive created by the side fins, and control provided by the center fin. They aren’t as fast as twins, but they still have a lot of thrust (hence the name). The side fins also provide added bite while on the rail and when riding deep in the barrel and on the foam ball. Meanwhile, the center fin is much smaller than on single fins, which means less drag and the ability to push them harder off the bottom and the top (facilitated, of course, by the additional drive and control of the side fins).
Thrusters take the up-and-down approach of the single fin configuration and ramp it up five gears. Practically speaking, this means faster redirects off the bottom, vertical snaps in the pocket, and aggressive down carves and cutbacks that maintain their speed and can be driven through from start to finish. Thrusters are also great in the barrel and the air, making them the all-around workhorse of high-performance surfing.
If thrusters are a compromise between single fins and twins, then quads are a compromise between twins and thrusters. The center fin is done away with completely, which removes the main source of remaining drag and results in more speed than the thruster. At the same time, the trailing fin inside each of the outer side fins increases the fin cluster’s effective length and width, without using big, cumbersome fins that are overly tracky. This adds a bit more control than is present on the twin fin, as well as more maneuverability off the bottom and up into the lip (although not as much as with the thruster).
Quads still have that lateral, down-the-line feel, but you can surf them a bit harder, forcing them to go where you want more than you can with twins. They won’t square of the bottom like a thruster, but they can be surfed off the bottom nonetheless, which opens up vertical snaps, down carves, and other modern maneuvers. At the same time, they hold great in the barrel due to those two fins working together on the inside edge, and they provide tons of speed for maneuvers above the lip.
Five-fin setups come in a number of different configurations, ranging from quad+Nubster (the Nubster being a small trailing center fin) to Bonzers (which are an older, more power-based design that includes a large single center fin and two small, deeply canted half-moon fins clustered together on either side, close to the rails). The five-fin Bonzer design has replaced the original three-fin Bonzer, which used one long, triangular side fin on each rail, rather than the two half-moon fins on either side.
Ironically, these two five-fin designs surf very differently from each other. The quad+Nubster is sort of a compromise between a quad and a thruster, providing slightly more pivot and control off the bottom than the quad, but without the drag of the full center fin. Meanwhile, the Bonzer is sort of halfway between a single fin and a thruster, maintaining that classic, slower, power-based bottom-to-top feel of the larger center fin, but with added control and drive from the side fins. (Interestingly, the classic triangle-side-fin Bonzer was technically the first three-fin board ever made, as the Campbell brothers began experimenting with their design in the late 1970s, years before Simon Anderson unveiled his thruster at maxing Bells Beach in 1981).
While this is a lot of information to digest in one sitting, it can be distilled down to a few basic concepts that help make fins more understandable. First of all, a fin in the center of a board will create drag (slower), but provide control in the pocket and a pivot point from which to push through turns off the bottom of the wave. This equates to a bottom-to-top, up-and-down approach to surfing. Fins near the rails do the opposite—they create drive and speed, but tend to spin out when pushed too hard off the bottom of the wave, resulting in a more down-the-line approach. Everything else is a compromise, blending the single fin and twin fin designs in a number of different ways in an attempt to maximize their benefits while minimizing their weaknesses.
That all being said, there really is no best fin configuration or wrong way to surf. They all have feel and surf differently, and at the end of the day, that’s exactly why it’s so fun to experiment. After all, if we wanted every way to feel the same, we’d all just be wake surfing or hanging out at wave pools.