We’d like to welcome another K4fins team ripper. Sam has been using the fins this winter in South Africa and loving them, he’s now officially on the team, here’s a little about his set up..

that one handed Taka is poetry (as Valentino would say if he windsurfed)

“In short, you will understand, we were won over by this setup Stubby / Ezzy Asymmetrics that offers the many benefits of plastic molded fins for K4 (flexibility, weight, slides) associated with fronts profiles that provide a more real term stability and support in the bottom turn.”

Full test on the U-ride site..

U-Ride EZZY ASY FIN TEST

We’d like to welcome Californian ripper Arnout Ter Schure to the team and let you know a bit about him.

The screws are A4 stainless steal, the plates are a brass insert moulded into tough Nylon. They are HALF the weight of the existing ones, which may not sound a lot but is a 20g saving in a quad. Add this to a set of K4 quad fins and there’s a saving of 0.15kg over a standard g10 set up -not insubstantial for the fins alone!
Strength wise these are more than sufficient. A vice/lump hammer test showed the first failure was to shear the lugs off the back of the fin(!). Eventually with a good swing of the hammer the plate shattered destroying the brass insert along with it, but this was at a far greater load than you’d want to subject your board too even if you were hitting rocks.

I think we have a winner with these, and will be supplying them FOC with our fins from now on.

“Nice trip to Sardinia, on the little island of Sant’antioco. Strong wind, flat water and friends is the perfect mix! I learned a lot of new moves. In June I’ll go there again for 3 months!”

photos @salvatore selis

Check out the k4fins video channel on vimeo
https://vimeo.com/channels/k4fins

RIP Mikey

As I’m sure many of you already know, talented windsurfer and one of the hardest rippers on our team, Mikey Clancy, tragically passed away last week aged 22.

We wish to share the link below -a tribute from Mikeys father Michael, and hope that it may prompt others to seek help when facing similar choices.

We miss you Mikey

MIKEY CLANCY FAMILY STATEMENT.

Check out this epic review of our Bubble Freestyle fin in this weeks Boardseeker mag..

www.boardseekermag.com

K4fins rider Lewis Merrony and the South Wales crew have just scored an epic day in deepest Welsh territory (down a lot of slow roads!), check the report here..
http://welshwaves.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/good-as-it-gets.html

EPIC!

If you’re wondering where the K4 asymmetrics are, well they’re just around the corner, not long now. In the meantime here’s a more simple guide to measuring your boards boxes ‘toe angle’ with this quick table…

Difference in span between the ends of your front boxes in ‘mm’ and the angle of toe your boxes have (taking a 10cm box length)

DIFF 0, TOE 0
DIFF 1.75, TOE 0.5
DIFF 3.5, TOE 1.0
DIFF 5.25, TOE 1.5
DIFF 7.5, TOE 2.0

I’ll put this up along with more tuning tips in the ‘tuning guide’ when the fins are ready.

Bubble has been using the k4fin he developed himself -the ‘Bubble’ 18 to take the freestyle title.

In waves we had a really strong showing; Bubble himself in 6th place, James Cox in 4th, and Jamie Hancock winning the overall title to become British wavesailing champion for 2012! Most of the guys now using ‘stubbies’ in the varied conditions on the tour, and Jamie using the ‘Flexies’ in white.

I’ll try and make this as simple and pain free as possible!

Asymmetric fins need to have more toe in than symmetric fins. In fact the optimum amount is around 2-2.5 degrees of toe in.
Our new fins will come with either +1 or +2 degrees.
Your board may have straight boxes, or they may already have some toe in.
My Simmer Fly boxes have approximately 1.2 degrees, I therefore need to use the +1 degree K4fins to give me 2.2 degrees toe.

The diagram below shows how you can make an approximate measurement of your boards toe in. At some point I shall be compiling a list of toe in for all the popular boards in production by measuring accurately with a vernier, but you can measure this yourself and perhaps help fellow windsurfers with the same board.

Hope that was easy to follow, click image to enlarge. You are basically finding the offset of the box from one end to the other, and dividing that by it’s length, to give the inverse ‘sin’ of the toe angle. (to find the inverse of ‘sin’ use ’2ndF’ then ‘sin’ on your calculator)
Feel free to email me your boards toe in!

So how important is accurate toe in?
Well, it’s not super critical, and in fact as with everything there are compromises and changes in feel which can be personal. Surfboards can have over 3 degrees of toe. I’ve sailed my board with both 2.2 and 3.2 degrees, and the higher toe was still in some ways acceptable. I was able to do some ridiculously tight duck gybes at full power, but it did feel slower in a straight line, I still managed to go 33 knots though!

-Higher toe will give easier tighter top turns but less speed, more acceptable in slow waves.
-Lower toe will give better drive through the bottom turn and more speed, obviously better for jumping or fast riding.

As a general rule you should be aiming for at least 2 degrees and less than 3 degrees.

Asymmetric fins are giving significant improvement in all areas, being more efficient, so don’t expect these to go away!

Nope, the fins are very definitely still yellow, but how green are we?

I’m not going to suggest we’re good for the environment, no manufacture is, but we do what we can. There is inevitably some waist or scrap material from the manufacturing process, and like most composite fin manufacturers we recycle this material by ‘regrinding’ it and using it again. We actually found though that the regrind material wasn’t good enough for making our fins with, as it compromises the strength and aesthetics. Luckily we manufacture a lot of other things such as lorry parts to lap timer casings, so our regrind goes to other places where strength is less important.

Super lightweight construction (250grams standard mount), saltwater corrosion resistant (A4 Stainless Steel fittings, now with added longer bolts), easy carbon rod detachment for travelling – epic shots!

Tested in BIG surf  and over 45 knots!

Only £65-00 for the standard mount (85cm carbon tube) ready to clip the camera straight on. (camera not included)
£25-00 for the extension only (40cm carbon rod to join to the standard mount) or just £85 for the full extended mount (85+40cm)

The mount in action on the speed strip..

Check out and like our FACEBOOK page for more action and info, or to upload your own pics.

If there is no option to buy on this page then please go the K4SHOP

Loads more pics on our FB page http://www.facebook.com/K4fins

And check out his Boardseeker article and video ‘exploring Leucate’ if you missed it.

Full story on Windsurf Britain

Steve’s now back in Falmouth Cornwall after a year in New Zealand cleaning up oil. Not bad timing as he’s just scored a run of Easterly wind and epic rare East swells right on his doorstep.

Check out JamieK787.com for the full story.

Check out the article on BOARDSEEKER.

WILL ROGERS | FREESTYLE WINDSURFING | TORPOINT from Will Rogers on Vimeo.

Check out Graham hard at work ripping Ho’okipa at SURF-MATIC.COM

Magheroarty from Mikey Clancy on Vimeo.

Spy pics with thanks to Julian Leach.
Some wise words from our top ripper Graham Ezzy…

Yes, fins are smaller than boards or sails, but don’t forget that water is much denser than air, so you need much less area to produce the same amount of lift. Even a 1cm change in fin size will have a massive effect on performance. And with multi-fin boards, fins matter even more.

Here’s a small, recent example:

I have been using a thruster setup with 10cm fins on the sides and a 15cm for the center fin. Tricks and turns flow like nothing with this setup…well, as long as the waves are the right size. In anything under logo high, the 10cm/15cm combo is magic.

But as soon as the waves get a little bigger (around mast high) as they did last week, I have problems fully committing to my bottom turn. For me, commitment is everything. So, I switched out the 15cm main fin and replaced it with a 16cm one. A world of difference that made! The single extra centimeter of depth allows me to push as hard as I want.

The takeaway is that one should have a versatile quiver of fins so as to optimize for the current conditions.

Rip it!

Jamie Drummond – Freestyle quick clip from El Tur from Jamie Drummond on Vimeo.

For more action check out JAMIES BLOG

Colònia de Sant Pere 09/03/2012 from boro mares on Vimeo.

TOTALWIND.NET

I was using 15 Flex in the Fly 85 as a twin and 13 Flex with assy 10 proto’s in the Fly 75. Ben was also on the k4′s as I lent him a set of 14 Carves – the only ones I had spare and not really designed for quad rears, but Ben reported that he liked them anyway.

Some more sneaky shots on BENS WEBSITE. Best pics and full story coming to Windsurf magazine soon.

Check out Mikey’s gallery from a monster Magheroarty session..

http://mikeyclancy.com/pictures/magheroarty-march/

15 000kms – A Roadtrip to WA from Alastair McLeod on Vimeo.

Graham ripping in Ireland by Bastien Pasqualini

Graham hooks up with Mikey for a cold session in Ireland and puts into words what many of us feel about our wave riding experiences.. full story at SURF-MATIC

(Reminds me of MotoGP rider Valentino Rossi and his description of a beautiful race being lines of peotry…. knew there was a link somewhere, it’s all about flow)

Part 1 is HERE

We’ve gone all surf stylie again and bought you a fin selection guide with bar charts. Check it out in the ‘About the fins’ section under FIN GUIDE.

We’ll soon be doing the same for various fin configurations so you can see how the fins work together on a quad, tri or twin.

Thanks to my sister Sallie-ann Salter at HYPEDIGITAL for the web developing.

Big congrats to Jim Crossley on nailing his 45knot average and firing himself into 6th place for the 2012 GPS-SPEEDSURFING.COM rankings. Jim was using a Moo custom and K4Moo carbon 20 fin. That means we now have two riders in the top 6!

Jim..
“The fin was great with the broad wind…the board/fin combo must have been perfect as I didn’t have to think about the chop until I wanted to slow down! I just had to sheet in and hold on!”

The K4-MOO carbon speed fins are available at MOO CUSTOM

10 cm fronts

Here’s an overlay of our smaller front fins, the ones you’d use with bigger rears. The stubby with it’s greater area (67) and larger more swept tip will give more drive, hold and grip. The Shark tooth has a more efficient template for speed, whilst being super loose due to having less tip -a good choice if your rears are providing plenty of grip and drive.

Graham Ezzy in Japan from umi pictures on Vimeo.

More on WINDSURFER INTERNATIONAL

More on this day at BOARDSEEKER.

The K4-MOO speeds fins are available from the MOO CUSTOM Dairy.

14cm templates

Notice the greater area and wider base of the CARVE -this gives it greater drive. The STUBBY has less rake giving it more pivot, and a stiffer tip giving more release. The FLEX is our original template and still great for most sailors with the ideal mix of grip and looseness.

The STUBBY is the stiffest fin, followed by the CARVE, with the FLEX being the flexiest. For more info on what this means to your fin choice, see the section on TUNING.

CHECK OUT K4FINS KILLING IT IN THE U-RIDE QUAD TEST
(Perhaps we should have sent an 8 or 10cm front to give us full marks!!)

MOOsters of speed from k4 fins on Vimeo.

Sea For Yourself from Mikey Clancy on Vimeo.

Dungarvan Speed Records from Surfdock Watersports on Vimeo.

Check out Oisins crazy windy last two months in Ireland on his Bloggage.