Fins

The Largest Surfing Encyclopedia

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Surfboard fins, or skegs, have come a long way from their crude origins, and yet today's jet-pack cluster of carbon fiber fins perform pretty much the same function that they did at their inception: they provide directional stability for the gliding surfboard, enabling it to turn and angle on the face of a breaking wave.

The first surfboard fin is attributed to Tom Blake, who is said to have nailed (circa mid-'30s) a scavenged metal boat rudder to the bottom of his board. Before Blake's innovation, surfboards were stabilized and steered imperfectly, utilizing the drag on their convex bottom shapes. Ancient Hawaiian olo boards, and later, the hot curl boards (with their narrow and deeply vee'd tails) exploited the forces of drag to stabilize them.

Fins evolved over the ensuing years, but essentially remained a sort of half-assed rudder until the mid-'60s, when throw-ahead surfer/inventor George Greenough began applying a new type of fin to his futuristic knee machines. Greenough's creations were called "high-aspect ratio fins," and while the template came from one of the tail fins of a blue fin tuna, the theory came from the disciplines of aerodynamics (the forces of drag upon the leading edge of the wing or fin are countered by the degree or "ratio" that they are swept back -- the "aspect").

The Greenough fins changed the face of surfing, most notably (aside from his use of them on his spooned-out kneeboards) by Nat Young on the seminal shortboards of the mid to late '60s. Now, for the first time, there was a fin that gave a board a type of turning leverage that allowed it to be driven and carved rather that just "steered," as with the previous application of rudder-like skegs. This, more than anything, laid the groundwork for the shortboard revolution that began in earnest in 1968 and continues to the present era of nitro-burning thruster surfing.

Fins are set in an inexact science; their placement on the board stems from trial and error research only. Modern fin arrays provide the optimum leverage and stabilizing influence when set in harmony with the board's outline and tail hips, as well as the tail rocker, vee placement and foil, or thickness taper.

Where fins used to supply mere directional stability so the rider could angle without sliding ass, the modern fins give us much more. Whether single, twin, tri or quad fins, they now create the leverage and torque that allows a surfer to climb and drop on the wave, thus exploiting gravity to such an extent that blinding speed and all sorts of maneuvers are possible. -- Dave Parmenter, February 2001