I’ve now had a couple of surfs on the FLV Winged Pin. Waves were only waist to chest high and pretty soft, but it was enough to get a feel for the board. As with all the other models that now feature the Full Length Vee, the board felt very comfortable under the feet and was very smooth in the rail to rail transitions.
The big surprise was the board’s speed. I didn’t really expect it to be as fast as it was. It definitely runs much faster than the previous single into double concave versions of this model (used to be called the ’73). So much so, that a couple of times, I forgot that I was actually on a single fin. I set the 8 1/4” flex fin at my standard single fin setting of 8” up from the tail, but with the FLV, the board is much looser than the previous versions, and a couple of times it almost let go on some of the harder turns.
For the 2nd surf, I pulled the fin back to about 7 5/8”. Bingo! The board became very solid in the turns, allowing me to slip in a couple of fairly brutal hacks and one particularly quick lip smash. Usually when I move fins further back, I’ll notice a slight loss of glide and trim speed, but not at all with this one. The trim and glide speed stayed right up there.
If you’re looking for a fun single fin, for waves up to about head and half high, that will allow you to cruise or hack, I think you’d have to do some pretty serious searching to find a better one than this.