I had an opportunity to spend a whole long evening as a mermaid, hanging with a diverse group of weirdos, outside in the drizzle, pretending to be extroverted. My real fear was being mermaid-mode for so long, knowing that my normal silicone fluke can lead to foot cramps after an hour, so I made a dry-fluke out of thick EVA foam.

My silicone fluke, a Mertailor Three, weighs like 25 pounds, but the EVA foam cut-out is like just one, which met my requirements for being super easy to flip my fins all night long.

I used hot glue to attach a second layer that I figured would help stability, provide a thickness for my ankles, and give my toes something to push against as a lever to better flip the fin.

Using EVA Foam as the fluke worked nicely: I was able to focus on playing chatty with the other attendees and just put "flipping my fin" into a background process, since a little flexing of my toes was enough to make a big tail wave. The light-weight fluke allowed me to express myself easily when I wanted to convey mermaid excitement and whip my tail around joyfully.

I think I'd like to try and reduce how much my heels kinda fell through the EVA foam foot-holes, like hot-glue straps on the bottom, so I won't have to rely upon the fabric of the tail skin to keep tension.