Friday, November 13, 2009

Bamboo Flexies Ready to Roll

Marlin's fine work at 101 fins is just about ready to roll. True to PHD philosophy, we wanted to give these fins a thorough test before letting them out.
The overall vibe is a smoother turn, that's really easy to initiate. Above are two shorter fins, pretty much designed for shorter hull hybrids, such as LS Eggs, MPs, and Little Bastards. On shorter boards, the lack of fin weight is really noteable. The fin on the left is the BJ-Foley 8.25. I based this off a Jay Foley template from Yater Pocket Rocket days. Doesn't feel as extreme as it looks-
nothing like a Norm-Flex. The fin on the right is a 8.5 MP. Both these fins utilize a "hinge flex", with
the last 1/4 of the fin designed to flex like a paddle. The zing this gives the fin on hard turns and,
when pumping down the line, is really noticeable. We're also putting out the PHD-1, shown below
in fiberglass, with a conventional taper flex.

This is a Volan in the PHD-1 template. 9.1". Notice the foil- the pivot is moved forward on the fin,
compared to Greg's templates, obviously a different template, the same flex pattern as the L-Flexes.
This is proving to be a killer fin in hardman hulls, but really shines in the more steerable hulls. It's a perfect Egg fin, and worth a checkout in Marc Andrieni's Vaqueros.

1 comment: