Changing Fin Instead of Sail For Windrange
 

Hi all,

Today I sailed with my 5.8m in force 6, gusting at 7 (according to anemometers). Although after 2 hours I was finished it wasn't impossible (surprising at my 54kgs).

I used a really small fin (28cm) and inboard straps but I don't really like the fin, quite a bit of spinout.

I'm thinking of getting a 32cm Freeslam from Select for use with my 5.8m on medium - strong wind days. Would this be a good choice? I already have a JP Super X 36cm fin which works super well in light wind.

Recently my 5.3m got stolen at the beach and I figured instead of buying a whole new sail, as after today I see that the windrange of my 5.8m is huge, I could just get a better, smaller fin... any comments?

Some of us just hate to re-rig. I have found that I can usually change fins and/or boards before I need to change sails. A 28/32/36 cm spacing should be pretty good for your 106 L board. I run increments of 3 cm in that range but 4 cm increments should be fine.

Coachg

With a slalom sail, better get a high quality slalom fin and use outboard straps. If too much spinout, downhaul the sail a bit more and move your mast-track a tick more on the back.

The 28 cm size fin sounds good to me. What kind of fin is that ?

Cheers !

JM

It's a really old Concept Wave - Speed Slalom fin... really stiff and thick. It's fin when the water is flat but occasionally I get spinout with it which is just impossible to correct. I'm trying a 32cm Tabou Freeride today, I'll see how it works out.

I tried the 32cm today in quite well powered up conditions. It worked really well. Didn't need to weight my heels to keep the board flat, initiating jibes was much easier and the one bit of spinout I got after a jump I was able to recover very quickly from.

I have yet to try it in really powered up conditions but so far I'm happy.

Agrelon,

Your last result is not surprising to me at all. I bet you tried a modern Select 32 cm fin and this explains why you have no more spinout issues with a modern fin on a modern board. So, I would dump the 20 years old Concrete Wave 28 cm fin and get a new 28 cm modern design ASAP. Your antique fin is simply no match anymore with your modern board + sail combo.

Cheers !

JM

I think so too, as with the old one there was absolutely no way to fix spinout. The only solution was either to bare off basically onto a run (difficult to do overpowered) or to sheet out, lose speed and then accelerate again.

I'm not sure how old the fin really is as I can't find any information about it online. I guess that in itself is quite telling of it's ancientness...

Cheers.