The twin fin fell out of favor for a few decades there, but in recent years, the setup has made a serious comeback.
In 1980, Simon Anderson made the very simple addition of one extra fin. It changed everything. Just a few years prior, in 1977, Mark Richards brought the twinnie to the masses by winning four world titles on them. Surfers realized that fin setups made a huge difference in performance, but Simon Anderson never really gelled with them. Although he was still one of the best surfers in the world, he took his years of shaping experience and began to play around with different ideas that were a little more suited to the kind of surfing he wanted to do. Soon, twin fins were left in the dust, replaced by the thruster. And although they never went away entirely, they certainly became less common.
But in the last decade or so, surfboards have changed. No longer is the Average Joe looked down on for riding a surfboard that works for the Average Joe. Wider, longer, thicker, and flatter, the options are varied. Two surfers who have a serious love affair with non-traditional (if that’s what we’re calling a standard shortboard these days) surfboards are Ari Browne and Bryce Baker.
In the video above, courtesy of the Mollusk team, the pair take a modern version of a twin fin, fittingly called the Radio Mod Twin, and put it through its paces in Australia and South Africa. They’re both riding the same board, but Ari’s is a 5’7″ and Bryce’s is a 5’5″. Created by Allan Gibbons, it’s a speedy little thing with a pile of volume in the mid-section and bottom contours carved out to allow high-speed turns — which are very well demonstrated by Ari and Bryce.
