Collection: KNUBSTER/VEKTOR FIN

Like many of Hawaii’s progressive surf designs, the Vektor Fin system found its start in the Waialua Sugar Mill. Ryan was foiling and cutting fins for other shapers, and started playing around with his own templates—just to do something different, with a focus on drive. Once the fins were developed, he started testing them on the North Shore, refining the templates and foils after each surf. The fins started out pretty big, but after a lot of hands-on R&D, the were shrunk down a bit to their current size.

When you first look at Vektor Fins, you immediately notice that they are different than your standard fin—or even the Nubster, which Ryan also developed. The design is focused on creating bite and drive—with a longer base length—but also the ability for release, which comes from the tapered rake. This creates a smoother, faster, more powerful ride without compromising performance.

Lately the Vektor team has been experimenting with a five-fin setup in heavier, hollower surf, adding Vektor’s a trailing side-bites in the rear quad boxes to supplement the standard thruster setup. This gives barrel riders the best of both worlds—the stability off the bottom provided by a thruster, but also the extra drive and down-the-line stability of a quad when in the tube and sitting on the foam ball. The beauty of these fins is that they are small enough to use as side-bites (as far as depth goes), but their increased base length produces the drive that you want when you are looking for an exit in a 10-foot Backdoor barrel.

But Vektor’s are not limited to big, scary barrels. The fin design is incredibly versatile. It can be used as a fifth (center) fin on a standard quad setup, similar to the half-moon five-fin setup Kelly Slater has used in the past. This adds a little more stability off the bottom without sacrificing the drive and commitment to the rail of a standard quad, allowing you to go more vertical on your top turns while still being true to the carve on the shoulder.

They can also be used as rear sidebites for a twin fin, turning your twin into a Vektorized “twinzer.” This setup feels like a compromise between a twin and a quad—you still have that looseness and speed of the twin, but with a bit more stability during bottom turns. Since the Vektors are designed to work with FCS boxes, the options are nearly limitless.

Twins and quads are fast and loose because the fins on either side of the board create drive and there’s no middle fin dragging through the water and slowing the board down. But the lack of a center fin comes with a sacrifice, because twins and quads are not able to be surfed as aggressively top-to-bottom as thrusters. Because they don’t have the stability of a center fin, they tend to spin out or bog when they are surfed hard off the bottom. This is why you will often see guys on quads, and especially on twins, surfing more laterally down the line and staying higher on the face of the wave.

Thrusters, on the other hand, have a lot of hold off the bottom and are great for vertical, top-to-bottom surfing, but they are a bit slower than quads and twins because of the aforementioned drag caused by the center fin. This can result in not making sections during long, fast barrels, and also not having as much drive and speed on smaller, less-powerful days when the waves don’t naturally provide a lot of speed.

The knubster concept is a compromise between the stability of the thruster and the speed of a twin or quad. Because we use the smaller Vektor fin as a middle stabilizer, it doesn’t drag as much and therefore doesn’t kill all of the natural speed of the quad or twin. However, because there is something there in the middle of the board to pivot off of, it adds a bit more stability through turns and makes these boards more able to turn hard off the bottom without spinning

Vektor fins are also helpful on high-performance longboards with 4+1 setups. These boards can be ridden as single fins or as quads, but if you want a bit more stability on the quad setup, you can modify a Vektor fin to fit into the FCS Longboard Box Adapter and use that setup to add a small center stabilizer (“knubster”) to your fin setup.

Whether you are on a longboard or shortboard, if you want the speed of a quad and the turning radius of a thruster, the knubster is the way to go!