I have not posted for a long time, largely for a simple reason: little had changed. I'm winging most days now, with just an occasional day of windsurfing or windfoiling. But making progress on jibes has been frustratingly slow, if not absent. I've had the occasional day where I managed to get 80% or more dry jibes, with a lot of them mostly foiled through, but they were always interspersed with a lot more days where most of my jibes were ugly and often wet. The good days were always when the wind was reasonably strong, but not crazy, and I had some flat water to jibe on. But in the summer, we almost only foil at Kalmus, and the usual southwest wind creates plenty of chop. The off season escape to flat water in the Hyannisport Harbor is mostly closed off, too, thanks to lots of anchored boats and boat traffic.
But just in time for the annual ABK camp in Hyannis, things are looking up a bit. In this post, I'll share some of the things that helped me. Many wingers learn to jibe quickly and don't need this tips, but perhaps they can help others who also struggle to learn the jibe and foot switch.
Move the back foot!
The first change was that I copied what I had seen top level freestylers do at the GWA event in Fuerteventura: they often moved the back foot forward a lot before starting their jibes - close to the middle between where their feet were when foiling in a straight line. This made sense to me: to turn, you need to move body weight onto the back foot, since the front foot is on the center line of the board, or even on the other side. But if the foot remains in the back of the board, then this will also cause the nose to rise. To stop this, you need to move weight back on the front foot, but that stops the turn - something I often noticed happening. Moving the back foot forward makes it easier to keep carving without changing the pitch angle of the board.
In the next session where I did this, my dry jibe rate finally inched up above 50% again, with many of the dry jibes almost foiled through (with just a brief touchdown for the foot switch).
Use the stable gear!
The next improvement started with a Youtube video about the jibe foot switch (which is where most of my crashes happen). It suggested to use a big foil and a big stabilizer to slow down the reactions of the board. That's what I had done the last time I made progress on the jibe, but at some point, I had switched back to the small stab, and also tend to use a smaller foil in the usual Kalmus chop.
Out came the big foil (Axis HPS 1050) and stabilizer (FR 500). With life guards finally back to school, we could launch at the Lewis Bay side of Kalmus when we got a northerly wind day, which meant flat water. I managed to switch my feet in the air three times, which was nice progress. The board set down every time after the foot switch - once only very briefly, barely loosing any speed, and twice a bit longer, but I was able to pop right back up every time. On the other side closer to shore, winds were lighter, so I practiced duck jibes. I made good progress in the wing handling, and foiled out once or twice, which I was rather happy with. Definitely an A+ session!
My luck continued with two more flat water sessions. The first one was in easterly winds at Kalmus. On my better jibe side, I switched feet in the air almost every time - still a bit clumsy, with some touching down, but at least starting to switch in the air became normal now.
The second session was in perfect conditions in Duxbury Bay: nicely powered on 6.0, extremely flat water, no noticeable currents. That made it really easy to switch feet in the air, and I managed to get 3 or 4 jibes where the board never touched the water - yeah! I also worked on duck jibes on the other side, and was surprised how well they worked in the somewhat stronger wind (near 20 mph). I had a few good ones, including one where I foiled through cleanly, without any touchdown. Finally, I also did a clean switch jibe - no big deal since they are easy, but I almost never do them, and this was probably the best I ever did.
Encouraged by the jibe success and easy switch foiling on the smooth water, I then started to try some tacks. I have tried less than a handful in the past - typically, a try would end up in a nasty crash that dissuaded me from trying again for a while. This time, the crashes were harmless, and I made a little bit of progress, which was quite encouraging. Here's a section from the GPS track that shows some of the tack tries, and the jibes preceding them:
Note that you can barely see any speed loss in the jibes that I used to get toeside for the tack tries! The jibe numbers from that session looked a lot better than anything I had seen before:
I kept between 70-80% of the entry speed in a bunch of the jibes, with the minimum speed not dropping below 10 knots. In my typical jibes where I touched down before the foot switch, those numbers tend to be lower, with typical minimum speeds of 6-8 knots, and only 50-60% of the entry speed kept.
Nina had a great session in Duxbury, too. I saw her try a couple of Frontside 360s (an upwind jump where you turn the board 180 degrees in the air, and then complete the full 360 degree rotation in the water). It's very similar to the Flaka in windsurfing, which she worked on for years with thousands of tries, only getting a marginal one a couple of times, with months in between. She made progress on the wing Flaka a lot quicker, and had landed her first on about a month ago. The tries I saw were "should have tries" ("Glucks" for those who know what I mean), where she completed the move but fell at the very end. But a bit later, she landed one cleanly! Needless to say, she was very happy about that, and started thinking about what she'd have to do to complete the full rotation in the air (which would make it the equivalent of an Air Flaka in windsurfing). Here's an image of Nina in one of here earlier Frontside 360 tries at Kalmus:
