Decided on a 600 Dom but going to get 2 boards, thinking either Hellfire or Alt?

haha sometimes its just that simple...

I picked up my new board yesterday :) Went for a 6'0" Spitfire in the end as I liked the look of the refined tail. Stoked to have a new board! Took it out in overhead clean and semi steep conditions yesterday morning. I did notice a slight difference paddling around on it compared to my 6'8" but the easier duck diving made up for that. Only got a few waves and struggled on those few, It's going to take a while to get the board dialled in and improve my sub par fitness. It's awesome to finally make it to short board territory though! Went out again in the afternoon in shoulder to head high slightly punchier waves and had a little more success. I was always too late dropping in though and couldn't make the sections. I swapped boards with my mate for the last half hour while we were out; he has a 6'2" rusty with 27.7l of volume made for full and mushy waves (I forget the name now). To my surprise I actually got on with this board a little better than the Spit. All I put this down to is my technique fit the rusty better than the spit so need to work out what I was doing wrong. I think I need to find the sweet spot for paddling the board then everything will start getting easier.

Has anyone got any tips on how the Spit likes to be ridden? Also maybe some FCS fin options as my mate commented on how he liked the looseness but seemed to lack drive and slowed quite easily. I was using the SF4's that came with the board.

Hey YSB. If those SF4s are plastic you can use them as non-returning boomerangs - chuck them in the air like you just don't care! I just don't get on with plastic fins at all and can't get any drive out of them. Actually they are good for foiling down to a little stabiliser fin (the rear trailer that is). As you can see from my signature line I use the Rusty R2 PC quad set on my spit with a little stabiliser (somewhat similar to the knubster, big thread on that over here). I remember it took some time to learn to ride the dom all the while I was experimenting with fins to get the feeling I wanted - so when I got onto the spit I just used the same set up and there was no learning curve it was just like the dom but it turned quicker and tighter.

I find the best place to paddle the thing is probably with my chest in about the place where it would be so that the nose would be level with the top of my head if we were both standing vertically together. The spit tends to go better with a back foot approach to get the tail to gouge into the wave. Though once you get the fins sorted out that will probably help a lot.

Thanks man! I think I will head back to the shop and see if they can do a deal on a set of fins. How do you find the 5 fin setup when it gets a bit bigger/steeper? Although I guess you would ride your Hellfire or Jackknife in these conditions? I think I had more success in the second session as the faces were a couple of foot smaller. Maybe a thruster set would have been better in overhead conditions?

Do you think the Rusty setup would work for me at my weight? Would you recommend a thruster set when things get bigger? After christmas I'm going to get a Hellfire but at the moment the Spit is a one board quiver for me.

I hate plastic fins too. My quadraflex came with a plastic set of stretch fins and it was slower than an average thruster. I put any fcs with performance core in and it went a lot better. I like the R2 set a lot on my Dom. I think you would do well on it. They would give you a lot of speed.

YSB, I never really change the fins - as you've surmised I just change the board to suit the conditions. For steeper waves the problem is at the front of the spitfire so changing things around at the back won't really do that much. Because there is less rocker and not much kick in the nose you really need to angle the board and take off across the wave if you can paddle into it quickly enough. Once you've made the take off the spit seems to be fine on steeper waves too though you have to perhaps be careful coming off the top of a vertical re-entry but you have plenty of options then because you have some speed to play with too. I've had my spit out in overhead waves, size is not so much the issue it's just steepness. The 5 fin configuration handles steep waves easily in my JK and HF so that isn't the issue in the spit. I think the guys that ride the spit as a thruster still find steep take offs a challenge.

Once I find the right set of fins for a board I rarely change them for different conditions. Once found, the optimum fin set up seems to be best in everything the board can handle and changing doesn't seem to help much at all, at least in boards for small to medium sized waves.

I don't think there is much merit in changing fins for different conditions, these are things inherently designed into the board itself. On the other hand if you just want to change from quad to thruster to get a different feeling (like a more pivotal feeling) for some variation in your surfing it would probably be worthwhile. I find the 5 fin configuration gives me the best of both thruster and quad - speed and a more vertical maneuverability, so I just leave it.

Thanks for all the help Slowman! You've been a great help! I'm keen to try a 5 fin setup like you do so will look into what quad set would be best for me. Maybe just a set of performance core sf4's might be the go.