Folks we had 4 Maui Ultra Fins (MUF) fins shipped over from Maui.
Basically each Fin is hand chiseled from a single slab of awesome.

Actually there is more science than craftsmanship to the fins but I will let the website explain.
www.mauiultrafins.com

These are upright pointer fins for waves. The basic philosophy just questions why for years we have had wave fins shaped like a dolphin's dorsal fin. The site also explains the benefit of a properly selected foil with an appropriate Reynold's number for our speeds.

The performance was amazing and by far the best bang for buck investment in windsurfing I have made. (AUD$130 landed!!!)
So on a price comparison that outways all the other technical advances our sport has seen. (non dacron sails, Epoxy/Carbon boards, skinny masts, carbon booms)

The best part for me was they hold their speed through a turn really really well and are therefore much faster and also looser on a wave.
I guess cause you don't have the raked section acting like a sea anchor as you turn.

I will address each point in a little more detail.

Pointing and lack of Spinout
The site makes some pretty spectacular claims but I have to say its true. They really do not spin out easily and just continue to point to windward until you lose sail pressure and boat speed.
At this stage I am not pointing too much higher than normal in order to maintain good speed, but at least as you "pinch" to windward and explore how high it will go you don't spin out but instead just lose efficiency in the sail. I also have to work on my technique - it takes some getting used to.

Maintaining Speed in a turn
This is super obvious in the jibe out the back. You can power around with heaps of aggression and just plane out a turn.
On the wave face at Scarborough it is less obvious, you just feel a little faster into the top turn and can travel further down the line if you need to go searching for a peak.
I think this is going to be fair easier to feel on a smooth wave face outside of Perth metro.

Agility on the wave
My JP real world wave used to not carve back into a wave particularly hard, and often during a bottom turn I would have to transfer my weight to the back foot to get the nose to swing back into the face. That problem has gone away.

Anything negative?
* I have not really seen any advantage in top end speed, but that is not my concern in the waves.
* I guess the upright design will pick up more weed so may not be great in the winter storms in Cottesloe.
* I was all set to buy a RRD twin fin next season and now I just can't justify it.


PS. The online purchase was easy, they email a Paypal link. Shipping is USD$27 but just get your friends to join in.


and the pictures...

I tried out the above pictured board and fin at Scarborough and I was pleasantly surprised, I was very skeptical that such a unusually looking fin would turn and feel so loose.
Well the board turned quite well and felt quite loose, didn't spin out on the wave face and was difficult to try and spinout while trucking up wind.
I do think though that my twin fin points upwind a bit more and feels a bit looser and tighter turning on the wave, but that could also be board design.
After 20 odd years of using swept back wave fins I still cant get over that the unusual outline shape works so well as a wave fin.
I wonder what the MUF twins would work and feel like?

in the pic of the 4 fins together .. 2 are noticable difrent from the other 2 ... how its got the little cut out on the lower trailing edge .. . y are thies fin so difrent from a standard wave fin im usto seeing?

Hi Folks,

Anyone tried these new shapes on Twinsers or Quads? I've seen some strange looking new fins for these, and am interested to see whether they bring similar benefits. My Twinnie Mistrals have the familiar old school dolphin fin outline, but if there's something newer out there...

Cheers, Jens

i have a set of quad MUF. havent had a chance to try. been freestyling too much then broke myself.
I've used the JP polakow fins on my twinzer and loved them. heaps faster less drag.
Reg at WSP is selling the remaining sets of the polakow twins he has in stock for $160 which works out cheaper than MUF for basically the same fin.

Select to expand quote

Jens said...

Hi Folks,

Anyone tried these new shapes on Twinsers or Quads? I've seen some strange looking new fins for these, and am interested to see whether they bring similar benefits. My Twinnie Mistrals have the familiar old school dolphin fin outline, but if there's something newer out there...

Cheers, Jens

I used them as both quads and twins. As twin, interestingly, they really stabilize the board on its rail, giving extra drive. A guess this is why guys like Polakow and Robby Swift likes them. Once up to speed, they are also really solid and you can drive the board more than with a similar sized "normal" twin fin set. For the size they sail kind of small when slogging and when just planing though. And if you choose them big, at least for me there is simply to much drive in the bottom turn giving a certain stiffness feel when entering the top turn. These things make it kind of critical how you size them up. To small and they can get sketchy at low speed. To big and they can get too drivey.

As I see it there are two clear instances when these fins offer something very special.
1. In bigger waves and longer carves where they simply give more stability and speed.
2. For more "B&J" use when you can either upsize them a bit for slower sailing or go a bit smaller and mount them further back for high power sailing. IN both cases you'll get a faster feel and a more direct connection to the water than with any other twin fins I tried.

I also used the xtwin 15.5 and xtwin (xquad) 14.5 with both a 9cm xquad and an 8cm elliptical set of front fins on some quad boards of my own design. The best combo was the 1.5. with the xquad in front. In this mode it was like you basically had the characteristics of the xtwins as twin fins left, but got better bottom end and also better top turn predictability, so basically a turbo charged twin fin setup. And compared to other quad setups I've used the drag is clearly smaller, so the ride feels really free and nice.

The smaller xtwin set (14.5) at times works really well in quad mode (with either of the front sets) ofering even more looseness going into the top turn but I never got it to work consistently, sometimes they felt a bit sketchy. But this was choppy Hookipa and other north shore Maui sailing, and just on two particular boards, so I still need to test some more at home to really say. I figure the 14.5c rear fins with some slighly bigger(10-11?) more forgiving, maybe flexier, front fins could be nice. Except for the elliptical and xtwin/quad design they also have a c-wave which looks more normal but still has their very special profile. I figure that may something interesting to try for the front fins. The reason I think that slightly bigger/flexier/more swept front fins could be nice was that I had such a set of hand shaped fins, which (despite a rather rough and not very nice profile - I'm a mathematician not a craftsman!) actually was the best match with the xtwins in the rear in actual riding (at least for me and my boards).

But I think that with quads, sooooooo much in in the fin tuning so take my comment with a grain of salt. The bottom line with the MUFins twin fins is that they do use different profiles which really make a difference for some sailors they will surely be a good upgrade.


Some pics:

Ola,

You certainly have plenty of experiments to perform with all those permutations.

In our winter I am going to get Mike (Rider5) to put twin X-Waves into an 04 Quatro fish as a light wind board. Interesting you found the sizing so critical. I think sizing is going to be hard for us as the Quatro fish is such an interesting design 80l 59cm x 235cm with a rocker line taken directly of a beach ball. It is already a slow board in a straight line so I don't want to over fin it but at 59cm wide it certainly can carry big fins.

I finally got to try the X-Wave 22cm in big conditions. Mast high, side shore on a 5.0.
It was quite intimidating at times so did not have a lot of spare capacity to think too much about the fin. With a fare bit of front foot and toe pressure the whole set up felt very secure down the wave face and it was nice to have plenty of speed remaining for the top turn after the climb back up face.

A friend who bought a MUF Wave 22cm swapped back to a high quality 23cm normal swept fin. It only lasted for one session and he complained they he instantly missed to looseness of the MUF.

Just wished we had more mast high days to get used to the board and fin traveling at those kind of speeds.