Monster, still looks to me you are leaning back and not forward and into the turn and yes, bend the knees. The board looks like it has too much weight at the back. It will turn easy enough but you will lack the speed you need to keep on top of the water and will just spin on it's axis into the wind.
Only having a vague idea of what is happening when I gybe and no chance of getting better half out of the shopping centre and wading after me with camera, here goes.
Trying for less than 180 degrees might be as bad as "not finishing your turn" on the snow?
A recent revelation in my case is that one does not have to finish everything while the sail is unpowered, rather let the wind come back smoothly in the clew first position before flipping. This would make Monster's stance just about right?
Am revisiting the Boards magasine method of placing the sail at right angles to the board rather than sheeting in hard against one's leg to begin the gybe.
I don't think you get what I'm putting down, enter at 30Deg then do a 120 deg gybe at max speed ( works well for full laydowns ) and when the sail powers up then turn the last 30Deg. 30 + 120 + 30 = 180 , if you tried a full 180 on the snow you'd be going be going back up the hill. This method is best for the windy days and does take up more room , works for me on flatish water.
Or, more importantly, you are getting a bit of propulsion just when you ae about to drop off the plane. This maybe is not so important to WA sailors who usually have more wind than they need. Various writings say that a laydown is just a way off spilling excess wind but I appreciate that it is a very efficient way of reducing the swing mass by putting most of the sail in the middle of the turning radius?
Monster, lean forward putting more weight on your front foot. Sheeting the sail in hard and leaning the sail back and also into the turn will allow you to lean your body forward. This will maintain speed and balance in your gybe.
I haven't seen the dvd, but the trailer for Guy Cribb's Intuition gybing dvd gives some good pointers. It might be worthwhile grabbing a copy.
www.guycribb.com/windsurfing_technique_DVD_0142v01item58.htm
I don't think there's one method that works for all conditions, but the essential for turning a corner is generating force towards the centre of the turn. This force is generated by both the board and the sail. Discovered only last yr that in choppy conditions, on a slalom board when you've got plenty of power, concentrating on getting a lot of force to the centre of the turn via the sail helps a lot. It relieves the work needed to be done by the board and you hence suffer less drag down there. So as you enter the turn, concentrate on sheeting in at a rate to maximise the force generated by the sail. Watch the spot where you hope to go to around the front of the mast.
The force is only with you for 1 second or so but that gets you a long way around. Also if you don't go in at quite full speed, (it's choppy why would you want to?) the the useful wind stays with you a bit longer.
If you get a few in a row your arms should be abnormally tired. I now recognise that we (maybe unconsciously) use the sail to generate g force on full speed flat water gybes but it's not so obvious and under these conditions the board can easily do most of the work. Maybe it's just me that takes 25 yrs to figure this out.
Trying to see what is usually missing in the gybe fail, waterstart, gybe fail, waterstart procession on the weekend. Seems that the average tryer does not throw the sail forward into position after rotation. And the longer that one tries to keep power in the sail on the way in, the more physical this has to be. Is there a secret to the effortless gybe
Flat water. lots of speed in. Let go of the boom early and just carve around. :-)
that works the best for me to, did you watch the vids saiquik
from sailquick
So a good carve which is more than chucking the board onto it's rail is necessary.
This is the reason for "bent knees", so one can push out into the carve to bring it around. Please forgive monopolisation of thread, can't resist sharing insights as they occur. Will leave it to theexperts..
more pics more pics
OK. Here are some more pics! :-)
My mate Crispy took some pics today so here are some pertinent ones:
Notice the body is committed to the inside of the turn. Not leaning back. Not pulling up on the boom, in fact I am not using the boom or sail for anything. It is weightless and also leaning into the turn so that it just simply pivots when released.
Here I have let go of the rig with my old back hand and the rig is standing up almost by itself. I give a light push to the right with my left hand to initiate the flip.
This is actually in a different gybe but is the next step where I have reached under to grab the other side of the boom and I am letting go with the old front hand. Body still leaning in. Weight on the balls of my feet. Rig weightless. Starting to flatten board out to widen turn radius as speed bleeds off.
Rig just coming into the hands. Board still gliding. weight still forward and on the toes. About to sink down, sheet in and move feet to new tack:
This is a light wind, marginal planing conditions gybe on a largish board (for me) ISonic 111 with a 6.6m KA Koncept set a bit full for marginal conditions. My high wind Alpha technique is much the same but a bit faster and more aggressive. (And I recon I am better on the other tack ;-)
OK. I have hung it all out there now. Fire away.....
clearly you are one hot gyber. so i'll put on the flame proof suit that seems to be doing the rounds.
my only comment is that you should reach over your old hand and not under.
please be gentle......
A good point Gestalt. I have tried both ways and this works best for me for a couple of reasons.
1. I use and underhand grip with the front hand and this is where the hand ends up naturally when you reach under so there is no need to change grip as you sail away.
2. More importantly, reaching under keeps the shoulders and upper body leaning into the turn. To reach over tends to make you raise the right shoulder and lean back.
I just discovered that Crispy took some videos as well. Ummm... maybe I will put them up somewhere if I can figure out how.
By the way Gestalt. That gybe entry in your avatar is very nice. Obviously the first part of a very nice gybe!
hi sailquik,
cheers,
i still bum out on lots of gybes, been improving of late though and getting a higher strike rate for planning out. some days are good, some days are bad.
i had a look at a couple of gybe vids, simon hurrey i think is the best tuition dude i have seen. i checked out his style and he is the same as you with the rig flip. looks almost exact. he switches hands under as well. http://www.simonhurrey.com/
hi decrepit,
my thoughts are that regardless of step or strap gybe the rig flip is the same. but as you say unless the wind is light and a clew first exit is used. then the flip is different.
Since doing this gps stuff, I've found a big deficiency in my gybes, I'm just having soo much trouble with cambered sails in river chop.
I think a step gybe may be the answer, trouble is I have to learn to do the powered up version.
So I'm no longer arguing that strap to strap (or should I say "no step"), is always faster, think it depends on the gear, the conditions and the rider. But on smooth water well powered up, yoyo's pic of snides is the way to go, high G, full lay down, strap to strap. (not sure that's what snides is doing but I suspect so.)