Following kiters across the sandbars is needed to avoid frustration.
Thinkng of sticking 4 kiteboard fins to a board, but who has tried it?
This is my present fin protection, a fibreglass pin at the back and a nylon rawlplug thingy to break away at the front. But u limp home to fix it.
When I was younger and windsurfing, I used to sail in the Nambucca River estuary. Anyone who knows it knows its full of sand. Back 20 years ago there wasn't as much sand there as there is today but still a fair bit. I remember reading about putting grooves in a hull to give resistance and not to need a fin. It seemed a good idea as hitting the bottom was a constant problem with the fence fin on my TC Fun Fan.
Later on I went to the Columbia River gorge and hired some local gear to sail. I sailed a funny sort of board with five little fins at the back. It was quite short and stubby. I think it was called a Gorge Bonzer or something like that. The fins were no longer than 10cms so they would be good to run in shallow water.
Nowdays I use a half meter fin.
Fin was removed from base by running into a submerged branch. Don't know how to do it except inadvertantly. Then dive down and scrabble around with only one arm working to retrieve the fin.
Mobydisc, what is a fence fin?
Need to still hike out and plane, of course.
nah (that looks like something out of benders toiletry bag)
a fence fin was typically a poly carbonate fin with 2 or 3 'fences, runing around the foil
parallel with the bottom of the board.
they where ridges which where i am guessing around 10 mm high and at 90deg to the foil. they extended forward of the leading edge and aft of the trailing edge aprox 10mm
(guess). they where designed to stop (i think) ventilation travelling down the fin.
they where great for grabbing cray pots and sending ones self in to orbit. funny enough they where also good at grabbing weed and sucking in the sailing consumer of the time.
you can see similar gadgets on air craft wings as well (i think from memory multifins australia sold the rights to boeing for a carton of piss, but i could be wrong on that)
there where also many variations of the theme from what i described above......
Found a picture of the Bonzer boards. The centre fin is longer than what I remember.
