One For The Friction Free Generation

Yes, we’ve opened our arms to the nu-wave of friction free surfing. We’re pleased to celebrate the colourful personalities pushing the approach into new places. Whether it be for progressive, regressive, rebellious or straight-up entertainment purposes. From Derek Hynd, Harry Henderson and his 88 soft top cult, Ari Browne and the asymmetric Rabbit’s Foot, Creed McTaggart and Harry Bryant on lids, to traditional style timber planks – the possibilities of fin free surfing are endless. Whether you look at it as punk or purist, riding fast on the edge of control is thrilling and worth at least a flat day’s worth of experimentation.

Now, we’re not here today to dissect the entirety of the modern flat board theory (you can explore a little further, here), instead allow us to introduce Western Australia’s Jordan Rodin. Think of him as the genetically incongruous son of Mr Hynd. Jordan rides a glass craft, one of Derek’s Far Field Friction Free boards, channelled and shaped purely for this kind of surfing. The short edit above (by Pierre David & Douglas Guillot) just dropped, receiving the Vimeo ‘Staff Pick’ seal off approval. It features a few minutes of slippery surfing and his reasons for ditching the rudders, presented wonderfully, of course. While we do enjoy his public display of affection, we thought we’d add a little more by throwing a few questions his direction.

“You can slide on anything, doesn’t have to be hollow, could be soft, steep, powerful, barrelling, or it could be mush,” says Jordan.

Stab: Describe the ideal wave for finless surfing?
Jordan: Jeffreys Bay…. any point break really, but there is something about the line you can draw out there.

Do you always ride fin-free or do you ride other boards? If so, what?
At the moment I am happy just riding free friction.. nothing else.

Derek Hynd, tell us your thoughts on him?
Genius, humble and very well spoken. No one is doing what he can! It’s crazy to see and think what he was doing years ago when he first started riding free friction, we’re all still catching up!

So, what is it that you dig about finless surfing?
Surfing a lot more fun when you’re going faster.

Care to give us some pointers on how to surf them?
Stay low and look ahead.

What should we look for in a finless board?
I don’t really know, there is so much science going on in these boards. Whatever Derek is on, he is the king.

Want to travel faster? Ditch the drag.