Answers

Time to give you answers for the questions I raised in my last post. The first question was why I often find myself using an undergrip with the back hand in duck jibes:

A few more pictures give hints:

This is a bit earlier in a duck jibe. I did not grab back far enough on the old side, so I cannot throw the sail - you can see it is touching my right arm. That happened in a lot of duck jibes. The sail I am jibing is a 6.5 with a 198 cm boom, so the hands really have to move back a lot - not just 4 or 6 inches.
Without a sail throw, the mast is still almost in the water, and the boom is pointing up:

So when I switch hands on the new side, the under grip is more natural.

Here's an image how things should look like with a proper throw:

The sail is more upright and still moving towards the clew. I can grab the new side before the harness lines with the front hand, and the back hand can grab with an over grip without any problems.

Now on to the Carve 360:

Every time I do Carve 360s after not doing them for a few weeks, I have to go through all the same mistakes I made when learning them. In lighter wind, that typically starts with lying the sail down too much, and then falling onto the sail. The other very typical crash is being thrown backwards when the sail powers up backwinded - that's what happened next. This crash has two common reason: not moving the sail back far enough, and getting the weight onto the heel so the leeward rail goes into the water. In the picture, you can see that my front hand is close to the harness line. That's a clear indicator that I did not move the sail back far enough. If you slide both hands forward, the front hand all the way to the mast, it's much easier to have the sail back far enough. The way I have it, the "bull horns" (harness line attachment points) are still right in front of my body, so the the bull gets me when the sail gets power.

The other problem visible on the picture above is that my back knee is not bent much, and my hips are not inwards. I'm still carving in the picture, but as soon as the sail powers up, it will push me onto my heel. That digs the leeward rail in, which (almost) always ends leeside sailing. But while my stance is not great, the first problem is the bigger one - with the sail all the way back towards the tail of the board, there still would have been a chance to finish this 360.

Clew-View Quiz

I like my Clew-View. When I'm clueless why I am doing things wrong, it tells me. I don't use my GoPro that often anymore, since even I have gotten bored watching myself mowing the lawn. But when things go wrong, a GoPro video or picture can help figure out what the hell I am doing. Funny enough - most of the time I know what I should be doing, but not what I actually am doing.

I worked on duck jibes and 360 a couple of days ago in Kalmus. Both are tricks I can do, but don't do often enough. Sometimes, they end up wet; sometimes they are dry but ugly. Two days ago, duck jibes were ok (but not great) at first, but then got worse as soon as I put the camera on. Often, I found myself in this position:

I'm on the new side after the duck, but I have an under grip with the new back hand. Not fatal, but not good, either. Who wants to guess what makes me do this?

In the Carve 360, I usually have to go through a series of mistakes before I make a dry one. I've done this often enough to know exactly what the mistakes are, and how to fix them. Still, it's nice to see what it looks like on video. Here's a picture:

I am just starting to get backwinded. Can you see the two things I'm doing wrong, and predict what happened next?

Steady Wind Defined

We windsurfers dream of steady wind. Today, steady wind came to Duxbury:

Averages of 20. Lulls of 18 ("lulls", ha!). "Gusts" of 22. For 3 hours straight. Then, variation crept in, with gusts of 24 and lulls of 14. I'd be happy about that every day.

I missed it. It was not in the forecast. I was tired after three days of windsurfing. I had to work. I did not believe the wind would stick around. I never sailed Duxbury in a SE. I have many, many excuses. But I really wish I'd been there.

Three New Tricks

Being part of a windsurfing couple has many advantages. One is that you can claim more new tricks! We sailed Duxbury yesterday, north of Powder Point Bridge. Here's a view from Dani's drone:

Nothing exciting wind-wise - mostly below 20. Still fun with 7.6-8.5 for me, 6.6 for Dani, and 5.3 for Nina. After missing a cold and rainy day with 30 mph winds earlier this week, Dean also showed up and rigged a 7.6, was was mostly underpowered on his tiny itsy-bitsy fins. Sabah showed up later after work, when the wind was going down already.

I took the presence of several other Fogland Speedsurfers as a valid excuse to revert to my old lawn-moving ways. Plenty of fun on the flat water, with top speeds near 26 knots in 18 knot wind, gusting to 20. Sailed about 120 km before the wind died.

Nina used the perfectly flat water behind the grass islands for freestyle. She completed two new tricks - her first Reverse Duck Jibe (also called Early-Throw Switch Duck Jibe), and her first Carve 360. Nice! The Reverse Duck Jibe was a result of working on the Duck Tack for many days. This time, when the sail came up too much towards the nose of the board, she decided to make it a jibe. The girl rocks.

Today was longboard racing practice in Duxbury in 8-14 mph wind. Dani proved unbeatable today. He used a 7.3 m freerace sail instead of his 7.5 m KA race/speed sail, which was a much better match to his Phantom 320. He also found a mast track position that worked much better for him, and started railing the board more. With all those adjustments, he finished every race in first place, usually with a large margin. Nice!

One of the things I worked on in all racing was railing the board on the upwind legs. So when we stopped racing because the water levels dropped, I just had to grab the Kona Mahalo and try some rail rides. That move already existed when I learned windsurfing more than 3 decades ago. I always wanted to do it, and even tried on various occasions without success. But today, having plenty of power in the 7.5 helped, and I actually got both feet on the rail for the first time! It was not nearly as tippy as I had imagined, and I actually sailed on the rail for a few seconds. The board, however, found this boring, rounded up, and belly-flopped, throwing me into the water. Who cares? I came up with a big smile - I know believe that I will get rail rides (with a dry exit) soon!

After two days with lots of windsurfing, I could use a break. If you believe the iWindsurf forecaster, I'll get one tomorrow. But computer models predict SW wind up to 14 mph, and it will be sunny and warm. Chances are good that we'll get a sea breeze around 20. Sunny, warm, windy - what are the chances that we'll stay home?