First Official Foray in Shaping a Skip inspired Nozzle

This is my first foray into the Nozzle world that Skips been psyching on last 12/13 years. It just crazy how time flies. I remember Skip had been redesigning his smaller keels and everyone was psyching on it, the DH Fish.  Skip had a bigger blank around so he shaped himself an 8'6 so that, as he said "could keep up on the twins" and that was the start.  We all got to ride that first Nozzle, before it was named.  Anyways I never built one just because I hadn't gotten one of mine own yet.  I knew the curves I had were usable of course. 

Anyway, a long time client Mark from San O called me up asking to build him one.  Mark is one of my favorite surf characters around, and a connoisseur of finely tuned longer fish surf craft. So I made the call to Skip to get his blessing, and Skippy was pumped! I knew what the dimensions were, but I just wanted to have nice chat and hubba up with Skip. The main thing I wanted to confirm was the fins. To me the 3 plug on the longer ones doesn't make sense because the rear marks put the fins at 7" up from the tail block, that is almost as tight as a small keel fin set up. Since moving over the Grant street 10 years ago, (wow time flies) I had already been building a few longer twin fin Fish Simmons pushing the fin cluster up the boards considerably compared to smaller ones. After speaking with Skip about his front fin placement that he has been doing with the 3 plugs, it turns out we have been running the same measurements, or really close.  He said 9" up and I had been doing 9.5" up so boom were in the zone.  I've also been using the high aspect twin, again a variant to what Skippy is doing.  The narrower base and flex of the bamboos is unparalleled still.  This white 9'3" is for Mark at San O, and is my first official Nozzle.  The second one was a 9'8 for young Max and the 3rd one is also of Mark, a 10'6 Green Machine.  Stay tuned for photos.