Surfboard Design | Modern Double Wing Swallow

Two main aspects drove the Double Wing into existence, planning area, but, keep the tail tight. The wings give speed, and the ability to hold high and run. The Double Wing Swallow also keeps the planning area forward for front foot entry speed, and combines a shortened rail length for release to maximize rail to rail performance, another driving force in surfboard design early to mid 80's, which, in turn led to further fledgling design aspects that now make up what is called a modern surfboard, but, sometimes the greatest things come in the simplest forms, Single Fin, Wings, Concave......Double Wings are exactly that.

Terry Fitzgerald Contest Results

During the 70's Terry was seen as the most devoted Australian Surfer / Shaper, in regards to refining his boards to suit the Hawaiian juice. The Wing Pin Single Fin, was the one design of many, that transferred easily between Hawaii and the vast Australian coastline. The versatility of the Wing Pin therefor resulted in many successful competitive campaigns on a professional level for Terry, in both Australia and Hawaii.

1972 Bells Beach Contest
1st Terry Fitzgerald
2nd Peter Drouyn

1973 Hang Ten , Hawaii
1st Jeff Hackman
2nd Ian Cairns
3rd Michael Peterson
4th Paul Neilson
5th Terry Fitzgerald

1974 Lightning Bolt Contest, Hawaii
1st Terry Fitzgerald

1975 Austalian Titles, Victor Harbour South Australia
1st Terry Fitzgerald

1976 World Cup Contest, Hawaii
1st Mark Richards
2nd Terry Fitzgerald

Terry Fitz doing his thing at 'Sunset'
Photo: Jeff Divine

Surfboard Design | Classic Drifta

Classic Drifta

The whole Drifta thing was a design divergence in the hunt for a combination of speed and points per turn. At the time (1980), rounding off noses, made a lot of design sense, when 3, 4, 5 inches were lopped off…..voilá, you have a shorter board with no nose weight, that can be stood up, vertical with less effort….but, still hold longer board lines on the rail…strike 1.

By taking the old double wing swallow tail templates and widening the front wing the boards had impressive planning area, speeding over flat spots and skating down the line. In stepping down real tail width with two wings, the narrowed tail held in when it mattered, biting deep into the wall….strike 2.

Ten years of concave work had provided the engine…single concave under the front foot – lean forward and accelerate, double under the back - lean back and turn, a wide based single fin and two smaller trailer fins focused on the front wing release points….strike 3.

Terry Fitzgerald

Surfboard Design | Double Wing Pin Single Fin

Double Wing Pin Single Fin

The Double Wing Pin Tail evolved from one of Terry's most popular templates being the Classic Wing Pin circa 72 , 73. Come 77 to 79 Terry was developing his wing concepts into flat out gun specific designs. The Classic Wing Pin was versatile in the mid size wave bracket with it's wide point forward and Single Wing to give the board a break point for direction change off a reduced rail length, but ad the Second Wing, as Terry did in the late 70's and the board now had a narrower tail to hang tight in bigger waves.

Kye Fitzgerald

Blue Clouds | Wing Pin Single Fin

TF | Body Arc Direction Change

Classic ! Just came across a photo of Terry surfing his 'Blue Clouds' Wing Pin Single Fin. Which of course opens another window, for me, to run shot's of myself surfing my Blue Clouds "slash" Wing Pin San Single Fin, at my beloved South Narrabeen of course.

A) I will write about something else, apart from myself, sooner or later...
B) My God! South Narrabeen has turned off like a tap! These sequence's are from Feb last year. Close to a year ago now, and South Narra has not woken from it's slumber since.

KF |

Nick Carroll | Bobby Owens | Classic Area Pin Tail |

Nick Carrol testing his new Hot Buttered Area Pin Tail 1980 at Newport,
and, the same board hacking Narrabeen 30 years later, above.

During the summer of 80 / 81 Terry shaped Nick Carroll a custom 6'5" pin tail single fin.
Nicks idea was that it'd be like a 6'9" wing pin, but sans wings, so it came back to 6'5" as a pure pin.

Lucky for me Nick gave me a bit of advice on how to surf this old girl.

"I used to shift the fin around a bit I think? Ride it on a big day and use that straight rocker to drive a long turn into the pocket or barrel. That's when it always felt best to me. Bigger waves the better"

So there you go. Bigger waves the Better. Hence the dash to Bells Beach. The swell forecast for Sept 27 looked as good as i had seen it, and what a weapon i had at my disposal to surf.

But, believe it or not, the story gets better. During the epic World Tour event at Bells in 81 a similar swell ( bigger and better) hit the Torquay Surf Coast. Making the 81 Bells event one of the most memorable in history, because of the waves, and of course, the turning point of Simon winning the event on one of the first Thrusters.

Before Simon made the final and eventually winning, he had to start his charge against Bobby Owens surfing Nicks board. Bobby was under gunned at the event like most of the surfers there at the time, so Nicks board was his alternative. The heat went down and is regarded as one of the best heats surfed by Bobby and Simon, and, the first man on man heat the world tour judges had to judge - Single Fin V Thruster .

Bobby was never going to beat Simon on that day , Simon was on Fire. But Bobby did go on to win the Trials and was regarded as one of the best surfers at the event, powering on Nicks 6'5 Pin Tail.

So here we are , similar swell and the same classic board 29 years later.
I gotta say, i was trying my best to channel the energy of Bobby, i could of used a few ounces of his Hawaiian prowess.



Trimming a few high lines on the big Bells wall


Scooting past Nick in the carpark. "WHat ! THats My Board"

Hawaii | Wing Pin Single Fin

A new quiver of Hot Buttered 'Wing Pin' Single Fins. How jealous are you?

To be able to ride Terry’s Wing Pin Single Fins in bigger waves is enough of a buzz, let alone surfing the boards for the first time in Hawaii. The lines I was drawing were a bit different to what was generally going on over their, but, that's how these boards surf. At the end of the day the game was pretty much the same, get your waves and surf them as hard as you possibly can. In a way, that’s Hawaii. So, as much as I wanted to focus on style and the single fin glide, the overwhelming temptation is to light it up , or bust down the door in your own way , so to speak,.

You easily get a sense of the competitive drive as far as surfboard design and surfing goes in Hawaii , and it obviously stems from the aggressive burst in the water over the 70’s. Surfing history is overflowing round this rock, on the beach, in the water , in shaping bay’s, glass shops and surf shops. And, under houses, just like the old HB we found stored under Jensen’s house.

My 6'8" Clouds 'Wing Pin' was probably my favorite board from the trip. I was a little nervous at first regarding how the single fins would perform at the high profile spots like Pipe and Sunset. But each of the boards held there own as expected, and were eerily suited to the waves i surfed. No doubt this stems from years of design and development on Terry's part during his long stay's on the North Shore and Kauai.

Anyway , put aside the competitive surfing environment, Starbucks and hobnobs, and your basically left with the greatest surf destination in the world. I don’t know if it is reflected in the photo’s, but I had one of the best times during this last trip to Hawaii. Good waves, crowds fairly mellow, and hanging out with really cool folks. A great environment to surf some classic boards shaped by my old man.
So , special thanks to Kieron Lilliane Kawani and Yasmin, Sean Davey, Jensen Hassett, Bunter, Chris Hagan and Alia and Rena

Waxing up my 7'6 Wing Pin, Sunset Beach.



6'10 Clouds Wing Pin, Pipe






The old Hot Buttered relic stored at Jensen's place



Special thanks to Sean Davey for letting me use his photo's. Legend photog, couldn't ask for a better bloke to hang out with on the islands. Check out his bag at www.seandavey.com