Foil Jibes, Big Feet, and Forgetfulness

Back in February, I posted about a foil session where I had tons of good foil jibes, thanks to help from Andy Brandt. I should have known that would not last! After all, Andy also taught me how to plane through windsurf jibes ... and then, I had to take another dozen ABK camps where he had to jog my memory how to jibe properly. He was usually able to fix my problems within an hour. But in the weeks and months after a camp, I'd start forgetting, and went back to practicing bad old habits instead.

Windsurfers have to be optimists, so I hoped that this would not repeat itself with foil jibing. But whenever I tried to jibe back home on Cape Cod, a typical result would look like this:

Well, perhaps not always this flashy, but usually wet. Which is a real bummer, since I got that faster foil which really calls for using big cambered sails - sails that I really do not want to waterstart or uphaul all the time!

I was coming close to resigning myself to a lifetime of foil tacks when my endless hours browsing windsurf and windfoil forums paid off. A fellow foiler whom I had met in Corpus Christi posted a picture on Seabreeze that illustrated what had helped him to foil through jibes. The key was to have both feet pointing forward, towards the nose of the board. So a couple of foil sessions ago, when my initial foil attempts had resulted in the usual crashes, I tried his tip. Immediately, my jibes remained dry! They may still have been ugly as hell, with lots of wobbling, but at least I was not falling anymore!

A look at the GoPro footage from the session reveals that the differences in foot orientation were much smaller than I thought. Here's how my feet were placed in the initial crashed jibes:

Note that the back foot is almost perpendicular to the long axis of the board.

For comparison, here's a screen shot from a later (dry) jibe where I tried to have the toes pointing forward:

The difference in foot orientation is much smaller than I thought - maybe a 20 degree difference for both front and back foot. The feet are also closer together in the long direction of the board, as can be seen by looking at the distance from the front heel and the back toes to the black line on the board. This means that smaller steps are required during the foot change. Together, these changes made the "dry rate" in the jibes go from 20% to more than 80%. So far, so good!

Thursday was another great day to work on foil jibes at Kalmus. Just check out the wind graph:

Some Kalmus windsurfers may want to point out that northerly directions are not so great at Kalmus, and use the lulls of 5 mph and gusts up to 25 mph as "proof". But then, neither would they go out in the 10-13 mph averages that we had at the beginning of the session! But northerly wind directions are offshore at Kalmus, meaning the water is very flat. Just perfect for jibe practice! You don't need to be an expert to enjoy the conditions, either - Joanie, who is still a foil beginner, had some very nice long foil rides today with her 5.4 m sail. 

My only goal for today's session was to focus on the foot work in jibes - the initial setup with feet pointing forward, and a smooth(-ish) foot switch. I jibed 15 times in the 2 hour session today. 14 of those jibes were dry, which I am quite happy with. Some where nicer than others; today's GoPro footage was quite useful to get hints about what might cause the problems, and what to try to fix them.

In a few of the uglier jibes, the sail flip felt very unbalanced, and I often had to grab the mast instead of going boom-to-boom. Here's an example screen shot:

That sail has gotten away from me, forcing me to bend over. But why? A look at the board gives a hint: the leeside edge of the board is in the water. That means that the board is carving in the wrong direction! That's clearly visible in the GPS data for this jibe:

During the sail flip, the board turns back by about 15 degrees within one second. That does not really help to complete the jibe! But worse, it puts the sail in a pretty bad position - it's pretty much flagging out to the front of the board. No wonder something felt off!

To understand why this happened, we can look back a bit further in the video:

Check the placement of the old front foot as it is stepping back. The entire foot is on the wrong side of the center line - the lee side. As soon as I lift the old back foot to step forward, this will reverse the carving direction of the board! 

For comparison, here is the foot position at the same point in one of the better jibes of the day:

The new back foot stepped about a couple of inches closer to the old back foot, which makes it straddle the centerline of the board. With weight on the heel of the new back foot, the board will keep turning the right way even as I step forward with the old back foot. Indeed, the GPS tracks for this jibe show that the board kept carving about 10 degrees, from 148 degrees to the wind to 138 degrees. That's 25 degrees better, just because the foot placement is a couple of inches different! With the board continuing to turn the right way, the sail flip on this jibe was easy:

Maybe the jibe was not perfect, but I was able to keep the speed above 7 knots, which let me get right back onto the foil after the sail flip - good enough for me!

So the question arises: how can I make sure that the front foot steps back to exactly the right place? One possible solution would be to put the older carving foot further to the outside of the board, so that there is more space for that big front foot as it steps back. But when I tried this in the past, a new problem occurred: when lifting the old front foot to step back, the board tilted a lot, which often resulted in a crash. That sometimes made for great screen shots, where it look like I'm trying rail rides with a foil - but it did not make for dry jibes. In other tries, I would feel the board starting to tilt when the old front foot started to move, and I'd cut the step short to prevent the board from tilting. That, however, would leave it on the wrong side of the board again! So while the tip to "move the carving foot all the way to the outside" may work for some foilers, it does not work for me.

But let's have another look at the last picture above, where the sail flip worked well enough. You can see that both of my feet are in front of the foot pads - in other words, too far forward. That means that the board will go down and touch the water, and won't start flying again until I moved both feet back again. For the goal of fully foiled jibes without water contact, that's not good enough. It is, however, very typical for my "good" jibes: even in my session in Corpus Christi, where I almost foiled cleanly through many jibes, the board would often touch touch briefly just after the sail flip (or, in sail first jibes, the foot switch).

So I really have two problems, let's call them "wrong side" and "too far forward". My lovely wife never experienced these problems, and I think that's simply because her feet are a lot smaller, so it's much easier to find space on the board. Unfortunately, blaming my big feet does not really help. What might help, however, is stepping heel-to-heel, making sure I feel the foot that moves back actually touch the heel of the old back foot. That would place the back foot a bit further back, and the heel on the correct (windward) side of the centerline. If we now assume a constant size for the step forward, the front foot should also end up a bit further back. That would be progress.

But one of the things that I glossed over somewhat was that in the initial setup, I move the feet closer to each other in relation to the long axis of the board: the back foot goes forward a bit, and the front foot goes back a bit. That allows for smaller front-to-back steps during the foot switch, which in turn leads to a steadier flight. To "undo" this, it may be necessary to modify the foot placement during the switch: the old front foot steps behind the old back foot (but still heel to heel). That should make it easier to keep the old back foot from stepping too far forward, and it also should give the foil a little push up to get flying again, or to keep flying. I can't wait to get back onto the water to try!

Foil Jibe Tips

 After a year of foiling, I still struggle with the jibes. The goal of foiling through jibes on a regular basis remains elusive. Of course, I have all kinds of great excuses. My foil board is narrow - only 22 inches (56 cm) wide. Just about every article about foil gear in the German "Surf" magazine states that wider boards are easier to jibe when foiling. But this excuse seems a bit lame when I look at my lovely wife, who foiled through jibes on a regular basis .. on her skinny 90 l freestyle board. So I won't even bore you with my other excuses, which are even lamer.

Instead, I'll share a few insights I had after watching a couple of jibe tutorial videos from Sam Ross. Here's the step jibe tutorial:

The jibe is quite similar to a jibe on slalom gear. One of the differences is that he sails clew first briefly after stepping to stabilize; that's quite common for foil jibes even among racers, but unusual on slalom gear.

Overall, Sam's technique is very similar to what Nico Prien shows in his jibe tutorial video. One thing that looked very familiar in Nico's video was the "oversteering" mistake he shows at 5:44 in the video:

This has happened in many of my jibe tries: the board just keeps carving, and the foil seems to be pushing the board into an even harder carve when the windward rail catches the water. Nico points out that "you need to actively balance the bank" - in other words, flatten out the board to stop the turn.

I started trying step jibes on the foil, but moving the feet and the rig at the same time while the board is in the air always seemed a bit too much for me. Largely based on Andy Brandt's suggestion at the ABK camp in Hyannis last year, I switched to sail-first jibes instead, where you sail out in switch stance and move the feet later. I have no problems with sail-first jibes on windsurfing gear, but on the foil, they seemed just as difficult as step jibes. So maybe the tutorial video from Sam Ross, who calls it the "strap to strap gybe", would help:

Comparing the two Sam Ross jibe videos, there's one big difference I noticed: the position of the mast during the sail flip. In the step jibe, the mast is moved to the outside of the turn:

That's the same when windsurfing. But in the sail-first foil jibe, the mast does not move to the outside - it stays perpendicular to the board:

Since the board is banking into the turn, the mast is also leaning into the turn a bit. When teaching the jibe at the ABK camp last year, Andy Brandt said we should keep the mast to the inside of the turn. I guess this is what he meant! I over-interpreted his instructions, and thought that the mast should point even further to the water - something that's hard to do if you are not oversheeting.

Interestingly, during the sail-first jibe when windsurfing, moving the mast to the outside of the turn is not a problem at all. But the foil is much more sensitive, and moving the mast to the outside when letting go with the back hand immediately changes the carve, and makes it nearly impossible to complete the jibe dry.

When thinking about the instruction videos, I was wondering why foil racers always seem to step jibe, while many early foil jibe instruction videos used the sail-first jibe instead. Both Sam's and Nico's tutorials provide a clue when they talk about slicing the mast forward: on race foils, foilers are often going faster than the wind. That makes opening up the sail impossible, since you'd just get backwinded. On the foil, that means that the foil would probably shoot up and out of the water for a spectacular crash.

The sail-first jibe requires that you are going slower than the wind, since the wind pressure from behind flips the sail. In contrast, a step jibe also works when the apparent wind is coming from the front because you are faster than the wind; you just have to make the sail flip similar to the sail flip in a helicopter tack.

Both Nico Prien and Sam Ross are on race or freerace-type foils and boards. In Sam's "How to go Faster on the Windfoil" tutorial, he reaches speeds of 26 knots. But typical speeds on freeride foils like the Slingshot Infinity 76 or 84 are much slower. My typical cruising speeds on the i84 are around 10-12 knots, so I'm going slower than the wind speed most of the time. That makes the sail-first jibe possible, and it has one big advantage for "marginally coordinated" foilers like me: I can concentrate on one thing at a time, and don't have to move the sail at the same time as I move my feet. Time to go foiling!

Big Foot Problems

Have you ever had a windsurf session where your feet got bigger and bigger as time went on? That's what happened to me today! Let me show you.

It all started well enough. We did not get the usual Texas sunshine, but at least the rain that had been with us for almost a week stopped today. I had hoped to do some freestyle, but when the averages picked up to almost 30 mph, and my 5.0 m sail suddenly seemed huge, I settled for trying to jibe without falling instead. At first, things went ok:


But then, my feet started to get bigger, and I had problems getting into the straps:


As the size of my feet kept increasing, my increasingly desperate attempts to get into the straps after the jibe had me bouncing around:


When I finally got my feet back into the straps, I put them in really good. Too good, as I discovered when I tried to get them out again in the next jibe:


That hurt a bit. Clearly, my big feet required some changes. The first thing that came to mind was a duck jibe, so I tried that:


So far, so good. But I don't really do Duck Jibes. That's too much like freestyle. So how about we just copy the delayed foot work, but otherwise do a normal jibe? Let's see:

That worked! But then, I remembered what my windsurf teach guru Andy Brandt says about this jibe (called "Sail First Jibe" in Alan Cadiz' jibe video): "Don't do it!". I learned the hard way to always do what Andy Brandt says. One time in Bonaire, he told me to go in because I was tired. I went for "one more run", ruined a sail, and almost broke my nose. So something needed to change!

Fortunately, I remembered that doing a sail-first jibe with both feet in the straps is allowed - it's an "easy" way to learn sailing switch stance in the straps. So let's try that:

That has some promise! For some reason, though, planing out seems more difficult. One might argue that this is because the weight further back sinks the tail and reduces speed, but who wants to be that technical? I have a better idea: I'll blame the chop instead! Chop can be blamed for all kinds of jibe problems. Sure, Bird Island Basin does not have a lot of chop, but there is some! All I need is a place that's even flatter! So our next stop (after a brief return to Cape Cod to shovel the drive way): Dahab in Egypt! Stay tuned...

Put it behind you!

In windsurfing, we often do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Andy Brandt showing how to jibe

In the past two years alone, I jibed more than ten thousand times. Overall, the number is probably at least 25,000 times, maybe even 50,000. You'd think I jibe really well. Ha! You'd think wrong, sir!

After a recent session with mediocre jibes, I posted a few pictures here. My big question was: why do I pull myself up to the boom just before I jibe? I know it's wrong, so why do I keep doing it? Armed with my GoPro, Clew-View mount, and 5 Hz Flysight GPS, I set out to find out two days ago. Before I show you a video, I have to show you another picture, though:

Dasher showing how to jibe

This is Dasher in his "12 Step Jibe" video. I think this is a great instructional video. He teaches the jibe almost the same way as ABK does. But in many of his jibes on the video, he does not oversheet the sail nearly as much as Andy does in the first picture. The picture shows the sail when it is maximally sheeted in. He has another windsurfer in his videos who sheets in much more dramatically:

Another jibe from the Dasher video

This stance is much more similar to Andy Brandt's stance in the first picture. In the video, Dasher says that the more aggressive laydown style jibe is for smaller boards and really windy days. That's a bit different from what Andy says: he often tells me to push the sail down and fully out of my line of sight, even in mediocre wind. If I'd just listen to Andy and do what he says, this entire post would not be necessary... 

When I sailed two days ago, the wind was around 20 mph. I sailed around mid-tide at Kalmus, so there was some noticeable chop, but nothing terrible. I was well powered on my 7.0 m freeride sail and 110 l freeride board (I used a big 30 cm week fin). Here's a video of the one jibe I planed through nicely:

I planed out of it, but there are many things that I did wrong. Don't let that distract you! We will not be giving out prizes for the person who can find the most things to improve.

In the third, really slow showing of the jibe in the movie, it flashes and zooms in twice. The first time, it shows my surfing stance as I approach downwind. In my opinion, it is a reasonable good imitation of what Dasher does in the picture above. But a second later, I pull myself up to the boom! Bad idea. I know that the front arm must stay long. So why do I do the pull up?

When I looked at the GPS data for this jibe and compared them to the video, I got some important clues. Here's a picture of the GPS tracks:

The minimum speed in this jibe is when I am on a new beam reach, about 4 seconds after passing dead downwind. That was my first indication that I had flipped the sail too late. Looking back at the video, I saw that my feet switched a bit too late, too. Ideally, the new front foot should go forward at the same time as the clew opens up to clew first; in this jibe, there was a noticeable delay.

That means that I did my pull up when I was about to go dead downwind. The GPS shows that I was going about 19 mph, about the same speed as the wind, so there was no pressure in the sail. I knew it was switch the feet, but I obviously was still hanging to far to the back - I had to pull myself forward to get balanced over the carving foot. This must happen to me quite often, the pull up to get forward is something I do automatically, without even being aware of it.

Now, ABK Christopher's suggestion that timing is extremely important in jibes came into play. I did let the sail power pull me in from the hanging position to a more surf-like stance; however, I did not let it pull me in far enough, so I had to do some of the pulling afterwards. That extra pull then delayed the foot switch and sail flip.

Following the Dasher and ABK advice to "let the sail pull you in" is both scary and tricky. If you give in too fast, the sail will pull you into water; if you pull in too slow, you may find yourself a bit too far back, like I did. Getting the timing just right requires both experience and feeling; add some chop to the equation that changes your board speed and sail pressure, and you may just need a lot of experience.

So far, so good - I now had a pretty good idea why I was doing the stupid pull up thing. But how do avoid getting into this situation in the first place? Developing more "feeling" by practicing another 25,000 jibes does not seem like an attractive solution. But what about Pete's suggestion to pull the sail behind me, like Andy and Dasher's helper do in the pictures above?

I know this looks cool, but I rarely ever did it before. Andy says I should do it, so I should; but I never bought the reason he gave me: that this interrupts the laminar flow of air over the sail. If I am going downwind at the same speed as the wind, there is no more air flow over the sail, no matter where it is!

But now, I see a much better reason: when you push the mast down and pull the clew up behind your back, you can completely take the power out of the sail when you want. You can let the sail pull you up rapidly without having to fear that power remains in it longer than you thought. This allows you to get into a fully balanced, forward-oriented position not only sooner, but also more reliably.

Having all this figured out, I was dying to test it on the water. Yesterday's wind forecast was horrible, but fortunately, nobody told the wind, and it picked up to low 20s around noon. I had some extra motivation to go sailing: Dean, the fastest guy on our speedsurfing team, is currently on Cape Hatteras, and he's alway producing wicked fast speeds. I so wanted to be able to get a session in to back him up, so his speeds would count for the monthly ranking!

So I packed the slalom boards into the van and went. No windsurfers at Kalmus, so I started at Sea Street Beach, closer to the Kennedy Slicks. The tide was not ideal - just about 1 foot, and coming in slowly due to a neap tide, so the Hyannis Port Harbor breakwater looked extra tall. But the chop near the launch was too big for speed, so I cruised up to the Slicks, anyway. I was on my 117 l slalom board with the 7.5 m Matrix sail, exactly the same gear as what I had used in my recent "mediocre jibes" session. Same spot, same flat water, very similar wind - what better test?

I focused on making sure to move the clew hand back far, and really sheeting in during the jibe entry. Very quickly, I learned about another reason to pull the clew hand up behind you: when just sheeting in normally, the clew would drag in the water during the jibe, creating interesting situations. Pulling it up behind my back solved the problem nicely. Pretty soon, I was planing out of many jibes - a definitive improvement! Runs were about 600 m long, so I got to practice a jibe about every minute.

When the wind picked up a bit and the gear felt big and draggy, I sailed back downwind to the van and de-rigged. I wanted to go out on smaller gear, but had no desire to sail 1/2 mile upwind through chop again, so I drove to the harbor, and rigged there. Out came the XFire 90 and my old Matrix 7.0, which feels at least a meter smaller than the (newer) 7.5.  Back on the water, the fun continued for another 40 minutes. It seemed I was planing out of most of my jibes on the smaller gear! I stopped when I started making typical "getting tired" mistakes.

The GPS track analysis at home showed a rather large improvement. I used the "jibe analysis" feature in GPS Action Replay Pro, looking at minimum speed in jibes. Any jibe with a minimum speed of at least 8 knots is one that cleanly planed through. I also used a second cutoff of 6 knots, which are jibes that often appear to be planed through when watched from afar. During the "mediocre jibe" session in March, I had cleanly planed out of just one jibe, and only two jibes were above 6 knots. In the second session today, 9 of 29 jibes had a minimum speed of 8 knots, and 16 had a speed of at least 6 knots. The results for the first session were a tad worse, but still substantially better than for the March session.

Trying to figure out what's going wrong with my jibes sure has been fun. I think I have a bit deeper understanding of jibes now. Maybe I can now keep my plane-through rate up without having to do ABk camps every 3 months! But I have also come away with a deeper appreciation of the skills of the ABK teachers, and in particular Andy Brandt's teaching skills. It took me several hours to identify the many mistakes and deviations I made in the jibe in the video above, and to sort out what's important. In my experience from more than a dozen camps, Andy always sees the one most important thing right away, and the gives clear instructions for one thing to change that will let you make progress. If you have taken ABK camps before, you know what I am talking about; if not, sign up for an ABK camp! Maybe I'll see you in Hatteras in a few weeks. Apparently, there are still rooms available in a rental house very close to the camp site.

Let me end with the GPS tracks from yesterday's second session. These tracks are from the Flysight GPS. The superior accuracy and measuring rate of the Flysight compare to the GT-31 is really great for jibe analysis.

Spring sessions

I have received thinly veiled complains that I don't blog about our sailing enough recently, so this is a catch-up post. It's long and boring, so let me start with how interesting things could have been:

That's Jerry jumping at Coast Guard yesterday. The waves were small, but that did not keep him from having fun:

Coast Guard is an ocean beach. Our home beach, Kalmus, is not - it's in Nantucket Sound. Two islands 30 km to the south, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, keep ocean swell away. The Hyannis Port breakwater about 1 mile to the southwest keeps the chop down. But in SSW winds like we had yesterday, the big difference is that the wind in Kalmus is straight onshore, but at Coast Guard, it's side-offshore. With water temperatures just above freezing, that matters to me. I think it should - Nina and I both managed to kill sails in our recent sessions. Offshore winds, equipment problems, and cold water don't go well together. Side-off wind is a little better, but just a little.

When spring comes, many windsurfers around here start feeling slightly schizophrenic. On one hand, we love it when we get warm southerly winds. On the other hand, cold water and warm wind means that we may sit on the beach and stare at windless water: the dreaded decoupling happens! If the temperature difference is too big, the wind "decouples": as it approaches the shoreline, it lifts up, leaving us windsurfers windless. This happens when the wind is onshore or side-one; on offshore and side-off beaches, it does not happen.

Yesterday's air temperature was near 50ºF (10ºC), but the water temperature was closer to 36ºF (2ºC).  Decoupling was a definite possibility. But around noon, the wind picked up to 25 mph. I was on the water 90 minutes later, and had some fun on a 5.3 m sail. For me, that counts as a small sail. Things were fine for half an hour. They even seemed to be getting better as the wind increased - until I forgot what I had posted here 2 weeks ago, and practiced my karate skills on a sail again. Well, it was really more a slow tai chi elbow during a really slow fall, but the sail did not like it, not one little bit.

Back to shore to re-rigg. I picked the 5.0 this time, only to see the wind go down. Tried the bigger board, but the wind was watching me, and went down even more. Just about then, Nina was ready to go out on here brand-new four point two. Nope! She took my 5.0 and her big Skate instead, and I rigged a third sail - 7.0 this time.

When we hit the water, the wind was just about perfect for our sail sizes. With a negative low tide, water depth was rather similar to Bonaire, so Nina went and did her thing - duck jibes, push tacks, a few duck tack tries, and donkey jibe tries. Her duck jibes looked great (as usual), and her donkeys were getting really close. I just worked on jibing (yes, again/still!). During a recent session at the Kennedy Slicks, I had a hard time planing out of my jibes, despite being nicely powered (albeit on 7.5). To figure out what was going on, I took some clew view GoPro footage. This is what I saw:

This is mid-jibe, shortly before the foot switch. Both arms are bent - it looks like I'm trying to pull the boom straight through me. This is not how your are supposed to do this! The front arm is supposed to be extended! My knees are bent just enough so that I did not hook in again (despite long harness lines), but this stance kills speed. Here's what the GPS showed:

All my jibes were dry; I often picked up speed as I entered the jibe; but I lost way too much speed mid-jibe. This picture shows why:

With both arms bent, I am pulling the sail back onto me. This makes the tail sink and the nose rear up, slowing the board down. Funny thing is - I did not realize I was doing this! But it's an old and recurring habit - here's proof from our Tobago trip:

Of course, this is absolutely, positively not my fault! I can find many others to blame for this. Maybe I am just mixing up a few different bits of advice here: "pull down on the boom during the jibe", and "to pull down on the boom, the elbows need to point down". Taken separately, these two pieces of advice make sense; put together in the middle of the jibe like I did, they are bloody nonsense!

I am doing this same stupid thing just about every single time I jibe, even though I know it's wrong. This is completely automatic - chances are I have done this for years without noticing. So in yesterday's session, my only focus in jibes was to keep the front arm extended. I tried to go for Dasher's advice: "the hips roll in, the mast moves to the outside", concentrating on keeping the arm long. That worked ok - but I'd still catch myself starting with extended arms, then quickly bending both arms, and then extending them again just before moving to the inside. Muscle memory from years of doing it wrong are hard to replace!

Towards the end of the session, I found myself getting ready for another beach start with the rig in hand, but no board attached. Seems the board had had enough of me and decided to go back to shore. Since the water was just knee deep, I caught it quickly and made sure to use a bit more force on the mast foot this time. I was, however, rather glad that I had not gone to sail in side-off wind! The board would probably be on its way to Europe now...

Now back to the question what the wind did yesterday- did it decouple? Well, the wind was up and down, peaking at averages near 30 mph, and then dropping down to less than 20 mph. However, it did exactly the same thing at Chapin on the other side of the Cape, where winds were offshore. That indicates it was not decoupling this time - on a decoupling day, the Chapin meter would show stronger and more consistent wind. Looking at the other wind meters confirms this: both the Chatham (onshore) and the Hatch Beach (side-offshore) meter showed consistent winds; the West Island meter, which juts out into Buzzards Bay and is not prone to decoupling, showed wind patterns very similar to Kalmus, but a bit weaker. On many SW days, the West Island meter reads higher than Kalmus due to its exposed location. So it seems that what we had yesterday was something that is often seen in the wind forecasts: the wind simply was much stronger further out (eastward) on the Cape. The huge high that was driving these winds was a few hundred miles to out east, so this makes sense (kind of).

Well, I warned you that this would be a long post, so I'll just keep going. Edda needs to know all the details about our windsurfing, after all! Our last windsurfing session before yesterday was exactly a week ago. It was also a south wind session, and the wind was just as temperamental. It stayed around 30 mph for a bit more than one hour, and I got to enjoy some of that on a 4.7m sail, fully powered. Last week's forecast actually had predicted a quick raise and drop in the wind, and that's what we got. Martin arrived just as the wind was ramping up, and ended up rigging three sails, only to end up with just a couple of runs on his 4.2 before the wind dropped. After a short deep drop, the wind stayed around 25 mph for almost two hours, but by then, everyone had given up. Nina had a lousy day on her 5.3 - underpowered at first, and overpowered 20 minutes later. Her confidence was still a bit shaken from breaking a sail in the previous session, so that was not her day.

Two days before that, I had a short and sweet session at the Kennedy Slicks. I was on big slalom gear (117 l + 7.5 m) to practice for the ECWF Long Island in June, which was just perfect for the conditions. Once again, the wind was fluky, but I was lucky with my timing and got a nice one-hour session in. March started slow with no session in the first 11 days, but with 6 sessions since then, I can't complain. And there's still hope for one more session on Monday :-).

--

Pete commented that many problems in jibes being from bad entries, in particular not oversheeting enough. I agree that is is often true, but it is not what slows me down these days. Below is an image from one of the jibes from the Kennedy Slicks session. 

So far, so good - the sail is oversheeted and pushed out of the way, the front arm is still long. But two seconds later in this jibe, as I open up the sail, my front arm did indeed bend again, and I lost speed.

GPS speed in jibes: the movie

After seeing my last blog entry with movies from practicing jibes on flat water, a fellow GPS addict asked me: "How fast was your minimum speed in these jibes?" Answering this question took me a while, since I wore two different GPS units that day: the Locosys GT-31 and the FlySight. Let's start with a movie that shows two jibes, overlayed with the GPS speeds:


The first jibe was planed through. The FlySight gives a minimum speed of 10.19 mph, which seems about right. But the GT-31 shows a minimum speed of just 5.19 mph, which is clearly too low.

The second jibe was into a lull, and therefore not planed through. The two GPS units show a minimum speed of 6.2 mph (FlySight) and 7.07 mph (GT-31). The positional data and the doppler speeds for the two devices are a lot closer than for the first jibe.

Unfortunately, I used only the GT-31 at the start of the session, when the wind was strongest. I added the FlySight after about 20 minutes, after seeing that conditions were perfect to lay down nice jibes. For the time where I wore both units, the minimum speed in my best jibe was 11.4 knots; the GT-31 had a much lower minimum speed of 9.3 knots. The discrepancies between the two units were larger if the jibe radius was small (35-40 m instead of 60-70 m for wide jibes), and if the positional GT-31 data seemed less accurate (as in the first jibe in the movie above). I looked at a number of jibes on the videos, and whenever the units disagreed, the FlySight seemed to be more accurate. No surprise here, this is what I saw the first time when I compared the units.

I have sailed East Bay only a few times in planing conditions, but my search for a better GPS for jibe analysis started after another East Bay session. Just like back then, the GT-31 results differ dramatically between the positional data and the doppler data, with the doppler-based results seeming too low. In contrast, the FlySight data give almost identical results with or without doppler. The more accurate FlySight data form a much better basis for further jibe improvements, especially when synchronized with GoPro footage. In my best jibes last Saturday, I kept about 50-56% of my entry speed through the entire jibe. That's decent, but I think there is definitely room for improvement. I have a few things that I want to try out - can't wait for the next flat water session!

The Missing Link

We had some nice ENE winds last Saturday, perfect for practicing jibes on the very flat water in East Bay. I focused on what Guy Cribb calls the "Missing Link" - dropping down after the sail flip to re-accelerate. That worked quite nicely - here's a short video:



On Sunday, I taught my first windsurf lesson since getting my US Sailing Windsurf Instructor certification - the light wind tack. We met our friends Bianca and Jonathen at the same spot, East Bay in Osterville, which is also a great light wind spot. The goal was to get Bianca to switch from the shuffle-shuffle-drag beginner tack to the 2-step tack. We practiced a lot on land - first the footwork, then the entire sequence. It paid off - once we hit the water, Bianca's tacks looked great right away. Success!

I am definitely looking forward to giving more windsurfing lessons. It's the perfect time of the year for working on planing jibes - when it's windy, we can usually find a perfect spot (like East Bay) somewhere on Cape Cod.

GPS jibe analysis

When working on improving your jibes, a GPS can be a useful tool. Looking at the GPS tracks in GPS Action Replay, simply click on "Jibe analysis", and you get a nice table that summarizes your jibes:

I have sorted the jibes by "minimum speed" to quickly see my best jibe of the day. In this example, I kept a speed of 14.3 knots or more through the entire jibe - 70% of the entry speed (the "score"). The next-best jibe was pretty close, and even the average for the best 10 jibes is not so far behind. Great! Indeed, my jibes that day had felt good - for once, I had planed out of the most of my jibes.

However, the results looked a lot worse when I changed one analysis parameter by selecting the "Doppler" checkbox, and re-computing the results. Here is a direct comparison:

Suddenly, my jibes did not look nearly as good anymore - according to the Doppler analysis, I lost more than half of my entry speed in even my best jibes; for some jibes, like the first jibe that's highlighted in blue, the minimum speed dropped to less than half! What is going on?

Let me start by quickly reviewing the difference between "positional" and "doppler" analysis (not all my readers are GPS speedsurfers - if you are, perhaps just skip to the next paragraph). All GPS units, regardless if you use them for directions in your car or for measuring your speed while windsurfing, determine your position from the measured distance to several GPS satellites (typically 6-8). The accuracy of the position is limited by a number of factors to about 3 meters. My GPS, the Navi GT-31, measures the position once a second; the difference in two positions gives you the speed. When windsurfing at 20 knots, you move about 10 meters in one second. An error of 3 meters would then give you a 30% error in the speed, a rather large error! But fortunately, there is another way top measure the speed using the "Doppler Effect". Doppler-based measurements tend to be much more accurate, with reported speed accuracies of 0.1 knots. This is why GPS-based speed events generally require the use of a GPS that logs Doppler speed, like the GT-31 that I used.

So, if Doppler speeds are much more accurate, does this also mean that the Doppler-based jibe analysis is more accurate? Not so fast! Let's look at the GoPro video of the jibe #1, where the position-based speed was 13.8 knots, but the Doppler-analysis thinks it's just 6.2 knots:

 The jibe was nicely planed through, which typically requires a minimum speed of more than 10 knots. For comparison, here is a section from the same session where I was moving at about 7 knots (and positional and doppler speeds were very close):
Nina was also wearing a GPS, so I could use her tracks together with mine to accurately define this 8-second period where I was sailing at 7 knots (I was slightly slower at the very beginning and end of the movie).

Obviously, the board speed during the jibe was significantly higher than 7 knots, so the Doppler-based jibe analysis does not seem to be accurate. Let's take a close look at the track and speeds for another jibe (#12 in the table above):

In the middle of the jibe, the direction of the board changes by about 30-40 degrees per second for about 4 seconds. The speed tracks show something interesting, though: the Doppler appears to lag behind the positional speed by about 3 seconds! According to the Doppler data, the minimum speed is after the board started going pretty straight again; the upper (positional) speed graph shows rapid acceleration at this point. Looking at the GoPro video, the positional speed seems correct, since I hung down and pumped to regain my speed right after the jibe. Here is the video:

This jibe (#12) was a bit wider than jibe #1, and the discrepancy between positional and Doppler-based minimum speed was smaller. This was a recurring theme in all the jibes I looked at: the tighter the jibe, the more the minimum speed would drop in the Doppler analysis. I was working on laydown jibes, so I was cranking them relatively tight; Nina's jibes that day were wider, and the speed differences between Doppler and non-Doppler analysis were much smaller.

To some extend, the 1 Hz sampling rate will cause an underestimate of the speed when the board changes direction rapidly. Even in the positional analysis, we measure the distance along a straight line, but the board had sailed a longer arc. In the Doppler analysis, a similar error would occur; however, it should also be of similar magnitude, and not substantially larger. But we need to keep in mind that even the binary data files do not contain "raw" data, but rather the result of a complex mathematical analysis. From the time difference in the speed curves, it appears that the Doppler data include a filter with something like a 3-4 second time constant. In 4 seconds, the board changes direction by perhaps 120 degrees in the jibes - that's very far away from a straight line! I think this could explain why the Doppler speeds in the jibes appear to be too low, and that things get worse the tighter the turns are.

This entire thing is not just a theoretical thing. If I want to know how good my jibe was, it makes a big difference if I kept 70% or just 44% of my speed. Keep in mind that the Doppler-based analysis keeps estimating lower speeds for several seconds in a row, without ever "compensating" for it with higher speeds. If you'd draw two tracks, one based on positional and one based on Doppler data, the "Doppler surfer" would fall behind in every jibe!

This has a significant effect on alpha 500 results. For the top jibes in the tables above, the lower mid-jibe Doppler speeds added about 2 seconds to the time to reach 500 meters, dropping the alpha speed by 1-2 knots! Since alpha team rankings are usually quite tight, even just one knot would make a significant difference. However, I do not think that going to non-Doppler alphas is the solution, since the non-Doppler data errors add up over the 45-50 seconds that a 20-knot alpha 500 run requires.

For now, the solution for alpha rankings is to go with wider jibes with a very even carve. In the future, we can only hope that better GPS units with a higher sampling frequency become available. Several 10 Hz GPS trackers are commercially available already, but it is not clear if any of them provide the Doppler data required for highly accurate speed measurements - and if such Doppler data do not suffer the same shortcomings shown here for the GT-31.
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Added July 25, 2014: 
I recently learned why the position-based speed and the doppler speeds were so different, especially during jibes: I had my GT-31 set to "low power" mode. In low power mode, the GT-31 tracks fewer satellites (at most 6), which leads to much lower accuracy. Simply setting the power mode back to "normal" resulted in a much better agreement between doppler and regular speed data. The tracks also seem much more accurate in "normal" power mode, where the GT-31 typically tracks 8-10 satellites. 

Just say no to Speed Jibes!

The title may seem a bit contradictory for a wannabe speed surfer, so let me clarify: I am talking about jibe where the sail is flipped first, and the feet are switched afterwards - also known as "Sail First Jibes" or "Euro Jibes". I will be using "Speed Jibe" here because that's the term used in the Tricktionary.

Here on Maui, many sailors do Speed Jibes. I have noticed the same thing at home on really windy, choppy days - so the naive observer could come to the conclusion that Speed Jibes are the jibe to do in windy and choppy conditions. Gullible as I am, I actually worked on Speed Jibes for a few days here.. but not without having Andy Brandt's voice in the back of my head, telling me not to bother with "Euro Trash Jibes". Matt Pritchard pretty much said the same during my private.

The final nail in the coffin came down when watching the racers at the Maui Race Series. Here's a video of one group jibing around a mark:

Everyone is doing Step Jibes, with some variation in how far the sail is laid down, but little variation in the timing of the step forward (for the purpose of this discussion, I'll treat Step Jibes and Laydown Jibes as the same). What I found amazing is that falls during the jibes where rare - despite having to jibe at a pre-determined spot, plenty of distraction (the other sailors), and quite a bit of chop. Any single one of these things is likely to make me fall when I jibe...

Going through the movies I made during the races, I actually did discover one Speed Jibe:

This one was from a sailor at the tail end of the pack - no big surprise, since he lost a lot of speed during his jibe. For comparison, here is a jibe by Phil McGain, who dominated the races, winning all races except the one where his universal broke:

Looking at other jibes in the movies from the races, I noticed a very strong correlation between stepping late and loosing speed during the jibe. In jibes that kept the most speed, the back foot moved forward at the same time that the sail was opened up. Even stepping a tad later, as the sail flipped to the other side, typically resulted in significantly more loss of speed. Two screen shots from the movies above illustrate why:

With both feet in the back of the board, the tail sinks, putting the brakes on big time. Compare this to the how flat the board is in Phil's Step Jibe when the sail is in exactly the same position of the board:

Well, if this isn't a convincing argument for the step jibe, what is?

Of course, there is plenty of stuff that can go wrong during a Step Jibe, too. Here's an example of a bad jibe that Matt Pritchard caught on video during my first private with him:

I have been working on the things that Matt suggested to improve my jibes in chop:

1. Keeping the front arm long during the entry and oversheeting.
2. Stepping forward when the sail moves forward, and bending the front knee to put weight on it and flatten the board out.
3. Looking where I'm going (instead of succumbing to the dreaded disease called "Sail Fascination"), especially during and after the sail flip.

A couple of days ago, we went for a late windsurf session after work. Nina had some shoulder pain and decided not to go sailing, so she took videos from the beach. Knowing that this would be a short session, I worked a bit harder, concentrating on my jibes. I definitely noticed some improvements during the session, and felt pretty good about the last jibe, even though I did not plane through. Here is the video, with an inset from the clew-mounted GoPro HD:

When my typical (rather than my best) jibes in chop look like this, I'll be quite happy. My arms are straighter than usually, I oversheet nicely, and I look where I want to go (at least at the end). Still, there are a few things that can  be improved that even I noticed:

• The front arm should be straighter during the carve.
• Knees should be bent a bit more during the entire jibe.
• The step with the front foot to the back is pretty big, which sinks the tail a lot. Just sliding the foot out of the foot strap and placing it right behind it should keep the board flatter, and thereby keep a bit more speed.

This might sound a bit like nitpicking. But looking at lots of boom cam videos, I found that I make the same mistakes in most jibes; the difference between the dry jibes and the wet ones is mostly in how badly I'm doing these things wrong.
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Enough about jibes, here's a brief summary about what else went on during the last week. We did not sail last Sunday and Monday - Sunday because we needed a break, and Monday because the wind came up very late, after we had already given up hope. On Tuesday, I tried out sailing with slalom gear in Kanaha (iSonic 101 and Vapor 6.7). That ended up being too much of a change - just getting into the tight outboard footstraps after being used to big center footstraps was a challenge. After a couple of runs, I switched the board to my trusted Angulo FW 93 so I could concentrate on just the difference in going to a cambered race sail. The sail felt very slippery, I would have loved to try it on flat water - but for Kanaha, I switched back to my 5.7 Manic after a few runs. This gave me a whole new appreciation for how easy the wave gear is to sail under the conditions here - and on the skills of the racers that practiced on even bigger slalom gear the entire time.

Last Thursday, we went to Kihei for the first time, since winds there looked a lot higher than in Kanaha. We sailed from the Sunset launch, since that was the first spot where we saw a lot of other windsurfers. The sailing was very interesting. The wind was side shore at the launch, and the waves had about 3 miles to build up, so the water was definitely not flat. With gusts in the 40s, I found myself keeping the 4.5 I used pretty open a lot, and using all the things Matt had told me to keep control. The session was fun, even though my top speed ended up being rather low. The rigging area with perfectly manicured lawn was nice, but the water was much dirtier than on the North shore. I paid for that with a headache the next day - something that happens to me at home sometimes the day after sailing, but has not happened after sailing Kanaha or Sprecks.

Nina sailed only a short time in Kihei before her fingers started hurting badly - maybe from holding on so hard in the crazy gusts. She had a much better time yesterday in Kanaha, until she hit a turtle on her last run that stopped the board dead, and sent her catapulting and hitting the mast with her head. Fortunately, both her head and the turtle's shell are very hard, and neither Nina nor the turtle seemed to have any lasting damage. In Nina's case, that's a safe bet, she has neither a headache nor bruises; in the turtle's case, we can only hope. During the races earlier that day, one of the racers had hit a at turtle full speed, and got catapulted over the handle bars. That ended the day for the sailor, but again, the turtle was hopefully ok. I usually have between 1 and 10 turtle sightings a day; if turtles were easily damaged by windsurf boards and fins, the dozens of sailors on the water anytime it's windy would have had a negative impact by now. It seems that the turtle shells of Maui turtles are a lucky case of evolutionary pre-adaptation to windsurf fins :)

Jibe SLOWLY!

I have been windsurfing for 30 years now, although with maybe 15 years of breaks in between). For most of these years, I've been working on my planing jibes - and a lot of other windsurfers I talk to have been working on their jibes for many years, too.

My jibes are finally getting decent; I often plane through, as long as the conditions are what I'm used to. Getting onto the water more often since I met my lovely windsurfing wife certainly has helped, but the biggest contribution to better jibes comes from the 3 ABK camps I have attended in the last 20 months.

One of the things Andy had to tell me again and again was to slow things down. I finally really understood what he meant when I looked at my jibe analysis from yesterday's session. I knew I had done a few jibes that were rather nice, fully planing through on my small board. Here a part of the jibe analysis table from GPS Action Replay:

I had always focused on the first few columns - score, begin speed, and end speed (all in mph). This time, I noticed the duration column: each jibe took about 16-18 seconds. That's slow. I did a dry jibe in the kitchen, talking my way through it from jibe entry to getting fully going again:

"loosen up in the ankles, let the sail pull you into the turn, keep the sail tight, pull it all the way back, look forward, now swing the mast to the other side, open up, step, flip the sail, grab the new side, grab with the other hand, hang low, step back, accelerate"

That's about 15 seconds, spoken without any haste!
I then looked back at the GPS records from this year's camp at Kalmus, when I had convinced Andy do do a couple of jibes with the GPS (not surprisingly, both jibes he did were better than any jibe I did the entire day). Sure enough, the time for each of the two rather beautiful jibes also as about 15 seconds; here's video of the GPS replay:


The entire movie is 55 seconds long- two jibes make about 35 seconds (not including the preparation), and 20 seconds in between, before and after. This may not seem that slow when you watch the video - but talked yourself through a dry jibe, and watch the time it takes!

So, as Andy says: slow is fast!

The best way to improve your windsurfing

I just came back from a week of windsurfing in Bonaire (well, it's been a week now, but due to post-holiday depression, it seems like just a day).

Just like last year, I had signed up for a week of "camp" with ABK Boardsports. This year, my wife also joined the camp. We both had a blast - ABK camps are the best way to improve your windsurfing skills, have tons of fun, and meet nice new people.

I have been windsurfing for almost 30 years now. That does not really show in my skills - I took several long breaks, each lasting 5-10 years, where I did not surf at all. I picked it up again about 8 years ago, and have taken regular windsurf vacations in Cabarete, Margarita Island, and Bonaire. At home, I usually sail in Fogland, RI, or Cape Cod. 

For most people, including me, good instruction is essential to get better. I originally learned windsurfing at the University of Konstanz, which offered beginner classes at Lake Konstanz (Bodensee), and advanced classes at Lago di Como in Italy. In the Carribean, I usually took a few hours of private lessons - never quite as many as I wanted to, because the wind would often not play along, or something else got in the way. 

So, sadly enough, my jibe was still not good after decades of windsurfing. I'd usually make it to the other side without falling in, but with more fear than fun, and mostly without speed. This started to change during my first 5-day ABK camp last year. The wind was not so great, we played with light-wind tricks about half of the course. But in the 2 or 3 days that the wind was decent, Andy Brandt and his teachers gave me enough pointers to make a dramatic difference. After a day, I started to plane through my jibes. At the end of the course, I was looking forward to my jibes, because they were fun, rather than just taking them as a necessary hassle when it was time to turn around.

How did Andy fix what many previous private lessons, countless "clinic" presentations, and endless hours of practice on my own had failed? Of course, Andy or his instructors did illustrate jibe in theoretical lessons on the beach. But I think what really made the difference were just a few things:

• great feedback,
• focussing on just one thing at a time on the water, and
• consistency
  

2008: My first ABK camp

Bonaire is one of the best spots to learn to jibe (or to jibe better), because the water is just knee- to hip deep. If you fall off, you just beach start and try again. If the wind is marginal and cruising back up against the wind is difficult, you can simply walk. And the instructors can just stand at one point, let you jibe around them, and then tell you what you should change.

So, after my first couple of jibes, Andy called me over and (after telling me what parts I did well) told me to change just one thing. I did what he said, and - surprise! - things got a lot better. Then he'd call me over again, and tell me the next thing to focus on. The big things last year were to let the sail pull me up, into an upright balanced stance, and to do things slower. After I did both of these things, I planed through my jibes, even though the wind was just marginal. More importantly, I had a lot more fun in jibing. Being pulled into an upright stance, and then just coasting through the turn with no sail pressure, gave a totally new feeling of speed and control. 

All fine and good if things work in Bonaire on relatively big boards - but how did that improve my skills under different conditions back home? The real test came a couple of months later when I had a rare chance to sail my 96 liter JP board in 25-35 mph wind. I use this board just a few days every year - usually, I am on 120-200 l boards and huge sails to get planing in marginal conditions. Well, this day was much windier than usual, creating a lot of sharp, step chop even in Fogland's protected cove - but I discovered that I managed to complete most jibes even on the small equipment. The last time I had sailed small boards before the ABK camp, falling during jibes was virtually certain. Great!

The rest of the summer of 2008 was not so great, with just a few days of decent wind, so I did not get much practice. 

2009: My second ABK camp

When we arrived in Bonaire at the beginning of March 2009, we were greated by great conditions - 25-30 mph winds and (of course) plenty of sun. The wind turned out to be a bit too great for me - after just 2 hours of sleep during the overnight flight to Bonaire, and a 5 months break from windsurfing, the first day was more fight than fun. I was glad that I actually made it though one jibe - and that one was not very pretty.

The wind was a bit less the next day, and I did a bit better - but I still thought I had forgotten everything I had learned last year. When class began the next day, I discovered I was wrong. I just needed a few corrections to get back to good success rates. The first one was subtle - the position of the front foot after changing the feet. My foot had pointed too much to the outside, and not enough to the front. That was something I probably had done wrong before, but nobody had ever pointed out. Fix it, and - voila - much improved jibes. A couple more minor adjustments, and things were looking good again.

The next day, Andy started working on really improving my jibes. The goal was a nicely oversheeted laydown jibe. I needed to learn to push down on the boom after standing up, and pushing the sail behind me. I had to work on that a bit - I tend to cork my body when I oversheet. But in the end, my jibes looked pretty good on the videos we took in the afternoon.

On to the next goal: duck jibes.

We started on planing duck jibes after half a day of low wind, where we practiced low wind duck jibes, switch stance jibes, and a few more jibe variations. When the wind picked up and we switched to high wind gear, my second attempt to do a planing duck jibe (with a 7.5 m sail) worked. So did two more attempts in the next few tries. Then, when we started to work on making it better, I started thinking about how to do the jibe - and things fell apart (or rather, I fell a lot). For a few hours, I practiced the many different ways to fall when a duck jibe goes wrong, with a lot of high-speed falls. All good fun :) After working my way through falling in the different parts, I got pretty close to completing it again when Andy decided we deserved a break. He taught us the "fall jibe" - a practical way to turn on the spot that's pretty close to a jump jibe and a slam jibe. I did not care for the light wind version, but I love the planing fall jibe. Finally, a jibe where you are not only allowed to fall - you are expected to fall! That one was designed for me. I had a very good success rate right away, although my clew first waterstarts sucked at first. With a few hours of practice, they got better, and once again, I looked pretty good on the movies in the evening. Only when I looked at my GPS recordings for the afternoon did I discover a slight disadvantage of the fall jibe - stopping the board and falling in kills your speed :-)

So, I learned a lot in 5 days of camp: my planing jibe improved quite a bit; the duck jibe is almost there; and I learned the fall jibe, which is really handy in crowded situations, or when you need to jibe without loosing too much ground, or if you just need to cool off on a hot summer day. This seems to be the first step towards tricks like the vulcan, too - I see a lot of falls & fun in my windsurfing future. I learned a few more tricks for light-wind days, too, so I'll have fun on those typical summer days where the wind is not arriving as promised. 

What really underscored how great ABK camps, though, are was the progress I saw others make. Case in point: my wife. She participated in the camp for the first time this year. She's been windsurfing for more than a decade, but usually just a week or two in the summer, which means little progress (she got a bit more practice once we started dating a few years ago). Before camp, she used the harness, and got into the front footstrap - but just "kind of", always holding back quite a bit. In camp, she became comfortable with using the harness and both foot straps, and ended up going really fast - there were several times I could not catch her, which is great. She also learned the low-wind pivot jibe, and started to work on the planing jibe. Great progress for one week. And remember that all these skills translate to more fun on the water.

Last year, when she did not take the class, she also made some progress, but a lot less. She started the camp being skeptical, but ended up looking forward to the next camp. No surprise most surfers in camp are repeaters.

Many others in camp made impressive progress, too. Several surfers in the group I was in went from so-so jibes to nice planing jibes in a week. Most impressive were the two absolute beginners. The wind was to strong to be ideal for beginners - we were in high-wind mode 7 of the 9 half-days of class. So, what did the beginners do? The went from standing on a windsurf board the first time straight to beach starts, waterstarts, and using the harness the first time. Sometimes you see people who are great in other sports progress really fast, like competition skateboarders or world-class kayakers. But neither of our two newbies was that much into sports, so their progress really speaks to the quality of the teaching.

As I said above, one reason why the teaching was so great is consistency. There usually are 4-6 instructors out on the water. If you sail close to anyone of them and they notice something, they'll tell you what you need to do to improve. Typically, it does not matter who it is - if you have a hard time getting something, you may hear the same suggestion from 2 or 3 different instructors. At least when it comes to the planing jibe, they will all teach and demonstrate the move exactly the same way. That's rather amazing; in previous jibe lectures, different instructors would always emphasize rather different points.

Finally, a funny story from camp. One participant (Paul) had brought along a GPS, and threw down a challenge one day. He had given his GPS to another participant (Anthony) in the morning, and Anthony had clocked a high speed of 45 kmh. Paul did not get close to this speed that day (although he had reached 49 kmh a few days before, when it was windier). He gave me the GPS saying " you have to beat 45 kmh". I tried my best, but just got up to 44 kmh. To my excuse, the wind had gone down a bit from the morning, and kept going down, like it typically does in Bonaire. After I came back, the challenge passed to Andy. He has quite a bit of racing background in his 30-year windsurfing career, and had demonstrated that he could pump a 100 liter board onto a plane with a 5.7 m sail when others had problems planing on 138 liters with 8.0 sails. He looked great coming in, but the GPS was merciless: only 42 kmh! That gave a lot of laughs during the video review in the evening, helped by Matt's funny comments ("hit a sandbar, hit a sandbar!"). Of course, Andy managed to reach 42 kmh in conditions where most surfers out there were not planing anymore.. and the jibes he laid down during his attempt were just gorgeous. I swear he can sail out of a jibe faster than he went in!

So, I'm looking forward to warmer days to practice what I've learned, and to my next ABK camp. If you want to improve your windsurfing skills, or learn windsurfing, sign up! Maybe I'll see you in Bonaire next year. Until then, check out a few YouTube videos of Andy Brandt (and others):

• In light wind (check out the sailing on the back of the board near the end!)
• In high wind