Spinout - common causes

Lots of possibilities!

If your fin is in good condition, no nicks or scratches, and it's not super shiny gloss, then it's something you're doing!

I would have said that a 38 was ambitious for a 7.5, but that depends largely on your skill, and the shape/style of the fin. The freestyle guys go upwind quite happily on tiny 19cm fins with 5-6m sails.

Where are your harness lines? (I'm assuming that you're planing, and in the harness) If you have them too far forward, you'll be pulling with your back hand and loading up the fin through your back foot more than you should. I'm a fan of the Jem Hall Guy Cribb technique of having the front line at 1/3, and the back line a handwidth behind that. You have a bit more pull in your front hand than the back, and feel perilously close to catapulting for a while until you get used to it, but it does seem to be faster/more powerful, and spinout is much decreased.

Failing that, try getting a bit more speed before you hook upwind. The fin can support a lot more lateral load when it's going faster.

I had some major problems with spinout on my 105l board with a 32cm freeride fin and 6.6m sail, especially in choppy water. The solution for me was more downhaul on the sail (making the leech floppy down to the 3rd or 4th batten instead of just to the 2nd), and that's reduced spinout by a LOT (probably around 90%).

Also try to hang down into the harness more instead of just leaning out, which by its self puts a lot of lateral weight on the fin.

I use a 40cm fin from my big board on my 105l in lighter winds (i.e. just planing up to about 20kts of wind), it works pretty well. It's a handful in stronger wind though.

Yep - thanks for clearing that up sausage..

I have a 46 that I use with a 7.0, and also a 52. Both work well and can take more than I can give (reasonably) them before spinning out. Obviously I can spin them out on purpose, but neither has let go when I wasn't expecting it. Apart from that jellyfish incident...

It does depend a lot on the shape of the foil, and the shape of the fin. A narrow fin offers less spinout resistance at lower speeds than a wider one, but is more efficient at higher speeds while the wider one will reach a threshold where it just won't go any faster much sooner.


By which he means that the upwind rail lifts up, and you head off uncontrollably downwind in a screaming hurry! Worse if you have the straps inboard!

A 38 will work, but you'll need to have a bit more finesse or speed is all.

All of the above etc...

If it's the "Drake Freeslalom Swift 380" the BLUE one with 2million layers of blue paint and a transfer that's about 1mm thick which acts like a big scratch??

Get some wet n dry and at least sand off the transfer, I sanded all the paint off as well and now rarely spins out. (but a crap fin will always be crap)
(this was "Rogers" suggestion on the Starboard forum)

It's quite likely I think evlPanda.....

Actually, only last sail I concentrated on applying more MFP/downforce through harness lines etc. and was surprised with how much nicer the board behaved, especially over chop, etc. Will go from there and see if I have as much problem with spinout.

Fin size seems to be right from what I'm reading at various websites - seems as though the supplied fin size is in the centre of the sail range suggested for my board. Which is 5m-8m metres or thereabouts. So the 6.5m would be about right for the 38cm, maybe for the 7.5m it's slightly too small...... at a guess.

Anyway, quite a bit to work from now following all the suggestions etc.

ducati - it is the Drake Freeslalom Swift 380. So not the best fins eh? Have to be honest, I know very little about fins, ie. - what's good & what's not.

Cheers all!

too many drugs ?

I think your fin size is ok. I sail a 7.0m with 34cm freeride fin on a 110l board and almost never spin out on choppy port philip, except when screwing up landing a jump or when seriously overpowered. I can sail my 7.0m with a 29cm freestye-wave fin, but I wouldn't recommend that.

But I remember a large amount of spinouts after transition from a bigger board with wide 50cm fin. With the big fin I got very used to putting too much of my weight on my back foot. This didn't work well with the small fin.

So I started to a) put as much weight as possible into the mast foot and b) more evenly distribute the remaining weight on both front foot and back foot. Also I try to avoid sudden lateral pressure by sailing light-footed, absorbing any shocks as best as possible.

This works very well for me . Now I just have to work on properly landing jumps...

And yeah as the other guys said you definitely need to have your harness lines and everything else setup so that you don't have put unnecessary pressure on the back foot.

for upwind you can take some of the pressure off the fin by.

twisting your back foot so that your heel is pointing more towards the nose of the board.

make sure you back leg is almost straight and your front leg is bent (at the knee) which helps to swing your body weight forward at the hips

look forwards and upwind while racking the rig back with your arms.

also be very concious not to oversheet the sail. (having harness lines to far apart or too far back will do this) also grip the boom with your hands close to each other.

on big boards railing the board to leeward helps engage more rail and get the wind under the board.

on small boards try to keep the board flat.

if you find your sail doesn't feel fast and "slippery" while heading upwind this is a usual sign you don't have enough outhaul.

spinout heading downwind is usually because you are not driving through the front foot enough or downhaul related or any of the items mentioned already.

not enough downhaul / fin scratched or just crappy design (yes this happens sometimes with all brands) or not screwed in like a rock, or boom not high enough, (adjust boom to comfortable sailing position.....then raise it 4 inches!!!!!)

Hi Nebbian,

yeah good point, i guess to me anything over 140 lt or 80cm wide or a longboard is big.

WA must be treating you well. 94lt is my small board.


Hi Greenleader.

couldn't agree more, lift the boom!!!!

lol. we had a theory in brisy that you can tell a goldy sailor by the height of their boom.

you just proved that theory wrong. [}:)]

Just do it! next time your out. the first attemp IS the hardest after that its not so bad.

I was spinning-out heaps until I asked the question here. It's basically too much weight on your back foot, or you're pushing laterally against your fin too much (you need to push against your fin to get good speeds, but too much will result in spinout). Lifting your boom won't help if you're not committing to your harness, or your lines are too long that you're not able to put enough downward pressure on the mastbase.

In saying that, I moved my lines back, and concentrated on my stance, making sure that I balanced the weight between mast (harness/lines), front, and back foot to suit what sort of sailing I'm doing. Now when I spinout, it's usually when I've had a good sesh, and either tired, or being lazy, or pushing against the fin whilst chop-hopping!

Cheers again everyone! To be honest, it's probably a bit of all the above!

I do seem to apply a lot of pressure through the back leg so maybe I have to ease up on that a little. Also, I often return from a sail with white fingers and assume it's because I'm gripping to the boom too tightly - not commiting to the harness enough. When I do let the harness take all of my weight the board does feel more in control, level, etc. so this is probably a good place to start (stance and harness use)and see how things go before looking at new fins, etc.

Sailhack - sorry, I should have done a search on spinout before posting. Comments appreciated!
Haircut - At the moment the 111 is my smallest. Wont be long though though before I'm onto something smaller..... I can already feel that the 111 is too big sometimes. Will keep that in mind. My boom height changes from a hands width of the tail of the board to a couple of fingers, but normally I set it around a hands width, which to me feels the best. I've tried it quite a bit lower but really dont like it.

haircut gave me this advice a while back and it works a treat on my wave kit.

i also use a slightly lower boom on the wave gear and using a little more front foot pressure made a big difference going upwind.

In addition to Gestalt's advice, in marginal conditions I will sail with my back foot out of the strap and place it further up the board which keeps me planning and all but eliminates spinout. For me this is very comfortable although you have to be alert not to over balance (catapult) as the gusts come through. Ideally i would love to have an additional strap forward of the back one as it feels more natural when cruising. This is a remnant from my sailing days as a 17y.o. on a home made board which had the footstraps quite close to each other.