Wing jibes and tacks look sooo easy. Just watch Johnny Heineken:
But the facts that wing jibes are easy for the likes of Johnny and Nina unfortunately does not mean that they are easy for me. The GPS tracks from my last wing session tell the story:
The speeds at the bottom show that about every other turn included a full stop - that usually means a little swim. Not a single jibe was foiled through, or even close. But I was in Lewis Bay, where the chop was small and orderly, and the SE wind was steadier than in front of Kalmus beach. So why were my jibes no better than in previous sessions (if anything, they were worse)?
I was on a new wing, but I absolutely cannot put the blame on the new gear. My Duotone Unit 6.5 was an absolute pleasure to use, powerful in lulls, well behaved in gusts, and always very predictable. Instead, I might have to blame my approach to learning new things on the water: after some initial progress, I then have to discover all the possible things I can do wrong, usually by repeating them several times. That's not necessarily an approach that makes you learn things fast, or one that I can recommend for any other reason - but it's how I learn.
This time, I learned how you are not supposed to step in the wing jibe, at least not while learning on a huge beginner board in choppy water. What I wanted to do was a "toe side to heel side" jibe, where you switch the feet before you jibe so that the toes are pointing to the wind (in windsurfing, that would be a "switch jibe"). In preparation for the foot switch, I move my feet closer together, so that they are almost parallel. But then, instead of completing the foot switch, I chicken out and go straight into the jibe, planning to complete the stepping at some later point in time. Do you see where this is going? It took me a couple of sessions and maybe 20 or 30 crashes to figure this out...
The typical problem was that things got really wobbly as soon as I was near downwind, and had no more pressure in the wing. With the wing over my head, I often found myself pushed onto my heels, and then off the back of my board. It's a fun crash, with the board taking off and jumping joyfully - but it's not what I wanted to do. After all, I'm supposed to be the one having fun, not the board!
After a couple of dozen such crashes, and few more jibes here I recovered my balance through heavy wiggling (that fortunately nobody was close enough to see), and then watching Johnny Heineken start all his carves from a very wide stance in the movie above, I could no longer reject the theory that maybe, just maybe, putting the feet closely together before starting a slow carve might somehow be the cause of my crashes. What was missing was some forward-backward stability, and having the feet right next to each other is one of the worst possible stances to achieve this. So next time, I might just try to start the turn from a regular, wider stance, or perhaps even complete the stepping into a switch stance before reaching downwind.
There are a few great examples of perfect foot switches in the Johnny Heineken video above. Starting from the rather wide stance, Johnny first shifts his weight onto the back foot briefly, which makes the foil go up. He then steps forward with the back foot, right into the foot step, and then back with the old front foot. So briefly, all his weight is pretty far forward on the board, which makes the board go down again - hence the initial push on the back. It looks too easy when he does it!
Here's my current favorite wing jibe tutorial video:
