Big Distance on Big Red

The Paddle for a Cure event is coming next Sunday, and it doesn't look like I'll have a board with tie-downs for this trip. But wait, I remind myself, you have Big Red, your BodyGlove Wave/Imagine Surfer. It has tie downs. It even does pretty well with rocks.

Unfortunately what Big Red does poorly is track. The removable fin is cool, but it's also kind of puny. It forces you to paddle about 3-4 times on one side bore the turning nose forces you to paddle on the other. All that shifting gets to be a drag and makes the boar unwieldy for any long distance.

Enter my Larry Allison Gladiator Hybrid fin. I had bought it for my Exocet Marlin, but it had too big a footprint for the tiny fin box on that board. I was going to switch out the fin for an Allison Bat Wing fin, but when the problems with the board came up that seemed silly.

Photo courtesy of Paddleboard Specialists

The Larry Allison fins are specially designed for flatwater performance. These are some of the go-to fins for anybody who wants to improve the tracking ability of their boards. They're well-made and rather handsome looking, a perfect accessory for the serious paddler.

You can figure out what I did next.

I'll get some closeups tomorrow.

Now putting a Larry Allison fin on an Imagine Surfer is like putting a finely-tuned suspension in a Volkswagen Beetle. It doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense unless you really need to paddle that board a long distance. Which I do.

To test it out, I did my standard 7.34 mile bridge run. I didn't have my phone with me, unfortunately, but I timed the run at just over two hours. This was with an outgoing tide. That meant I had some serious current to deal with upstream along with some northerly winds. Taking in account a five-minute stop, I averaged a little over 3.5 mph. To be honest, that isn't bad.

Paddling Big Red was also an improvement. I could get about seven strokes on one side before I had to switch sides. That's a 100% improvement just by changing a fin. Not bad. The secret seemed to be to not push the board very hard. Do a steady, consistent paddle and you'll get the board moving pretty well. It will break no speed records, but that was never the point of this exercise. It was to see if doing any sort of distance on this board was feasible or just stupid. The answer is, it can be done.

Here's a comparison of the two fins. The Allison fin has more surface area and a stronger trailing edge.

A better shot of the board with the fin.

So Big Red it is for my big paddle, and it will make for some pretty amusing posts on StandupZone.