It’s a moment not easily forgotten. Easter, 1984, seated in the good room on a sofa covered in protective plastic at Zia Maria’s house. To the left stood a life-sized statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary while an equally imposing bust of Jesus Christ frowned down at me from the right. Directly in front on the TV though was my new god, Cheyne Horan, resplendent in a shiny blue wetsuit, carrying a dark blue board with a funny looking fin. Like many of that era, I’d spent hours…days, hanging at the old McCoy factory on Cape Three Points Road in Avoca, waiting for Cheyne to walk through the old sliding door.

But he never did.

Nicky Wood once did, but otherwise it was just a lot of time staring at the multitude of Lazor and Tri Zaps standing at an angle in the racks, the price tag of $350 seeming a little steep at the time for a paperboy who cleared $7 a week. Occasionally I’d glance at the sticker featured under the glass of Cheyne’s signature model; a busty topless woman with flowing dark hair.  At that age, and in that era, any sneak peek at a booby was a good day. Even if in cartoon form.

Anyway, from memory Cheyne carried the board down to the shoreline at Bells with the fin obscured by a towel. Christ’s unblinking gaze continued to look down at me as Cheyne rode that funny looking fin to victory that year, a validation of sorts after years of playing the bridesmaid.

Fast-forward 32 years and Cheyne and his funny looking fins catches my attention again, this time on Instagram.

I should point out I’m not a design guy...like, at all. Like many, I just nod blankly as shapers point to a supposed single to double concave running through the tail. But these fins of Cheyne caught my eye and after a few false starts, I catch him as one of his surf schools is in progress.

“This gunna take long?” he asks with that distinctivly happy, upward inflection. “I’ve got some students out on paddle boards and they’re heading towards the flags.”

I’ll get to the fins in a sec, but I’ve always wanted to ask, where did this sense of adventure with board design come from for you?
Dunno, to tell you the truth. All I remember was I was 13 when I shaped my first fin out of plywood and that sort of unlocked it all. I haven’t stopped tinkering since.

You grew up in Bondi right? Was there a lot of experimenting with boards back then?
Maybe, but I was just doing my own thing, looking at books and stuff. I had a lot of interest in the navy and what they were doing with the design of their ships and hulls. Then I ended up learning a lot of George Greenough, Reno Abellira, Barry Kanaiaupuni and Ben Lexcen.

Right. So let’s talk about the fins. I saw them on Instagram and couldn’t get my head around how they would work.
The easy threes?

Easy threes?
No, no. E, as in 'e', zee, threes.

Got it, so what’s the theory behind them?
It’s a design I originally worked on with Ben Lexcen [deceased Australian designer, famous of course for the winged keel]. It dawned on me about five years ago, ‘jeez, there’s a lot of stuff we worked on that I’ve never gotten around to,’ and this was one of them. It took me five years to work out the right size and heights, but I’ve got it tuned in now. Jump on these and you’ll go faster than you’ve ever gone before, faster than a speeding bullet.

Can you break them down for me a little?
Yeah, but just hang on a sec would you? (Cheyne shouts out to some of his students, “Hey, you’re in the flags, get out of the flags...no, that way,”). So the concept behind it is for a quicker reaction and more flow. In some ways they are the same as a Spitfire wing on an aeroplane. Fighter pilots have to react fast and control where they were going and it should be the same when you’re surfing. So with these, when you go to hit your turn they react immediately.

They look like they’re foiled on both sides?
Yeah, they’ve got a double foil like the wing on a fighter jet. But think about this for a second. Usually with surfboard design, it’s always been the wrong way around. In the old days, it was the wide nose and narrow tails, but the wide tails had to be underneath where you standing. Now think about the fin, which only has the foil on the outside. Say you’re hitting your bottom turn on your right side, that inside foil on your fin, what is it, a foil or a flat?

Um, a flat?
Right, so you see, you’re hitting your turn on not a foil.

I see, doesn’t really make sense does it?
Exactly, so if you flipped the foil and have ‘em on both sides, the water’s going to flow better off your fin. You could see that at Teahupoo, the guys were going super fast but struggling a bit with their direction change because the fins are knifing through the water and not flowing. The double foil concept gives you that same flow and quick reaction time going left or right. There is always a flow of water hydro dynamically around the fin.

Cheyne's EZ3 fin design

Right, so why don’t you think someone else has stumbled onto this design?
Because people aren’t interested in the finer points, they just ride what they’re given.  Think back to that fighter pilot again. His life is on the line every time he gets in the cockpit. The designers don’t leave anything to chance. He’s got to be able to bank and release in an instant or he’s dead. Think of sailing, same thing, mountains of money is spent just on design. Surfboards shapers should be worth their weight in gold, they should be paid in gold, but they’re not. So much money, like billions, gets pumped into design with race-cars of sailing boats, but there’s a lot of guesswork in surfing.

The fins I saw on your Instagram feed look pretty big.
Yeah, but you can dial them for different waves. If I’m surfing Kirra I’ve got three big fins in. If I’m surfing mushy waves, I’ve got two small side fins and a smaller back fin.

Are they compatible with FCS and Futures set-ups and what are they made of?
Yep. They’re made of fibreglass and hex-core.

What about board design, will they be compatible with any bottom contour?
Yes they are, and that’s why there aren’t wings on them. With wings, you’ve really got to dial them to react to the bottom of a board. I’m using them for guys racing on paddle-boards now.

Are they commercially available?
Yep, you can just order them straight from my website, surfer to surfer. The way it should be.

I have to ask, that win at Bells, how satisfying was it?
It was pretty sweet, Ben and I had been working together for a while and he was pretty stoked. But I’ll tell you something though and this is what I always tell Kelly. In hindsight, it would have been smarter for me to be the same as everyone else and use a thruster and use the winged keel and star fin in my own fun sessions. In hindsight, that’s what I should have done and when I see Kelly and see him playing around with that exotic equipment, I’ll tell him, ‘Don’t make the same mistake I did, keep all that stuff for having fun and use those Al Merrick designs for competition.’  I went through a lot of heartache going the route I did.

//ANTHONY PANCIA