They suck. I'm always screwing up into the wind and coming to near a complete stop. It's like I continue carving to long or something. The GPS overlay tells the story -





Any tips that will turn those in to smooth symmetrical loops like these?

i've extrapolated your squiggly lines with my super 3d NCIS computer (i had to zoom and enhance the image 3 times), and i've concluded, you're flipping your rig too late, and you need to get your weight further forward in your gybes.

I'm guessing where your gybes stall is the same time as you flip your rig which is too late.

so charge in faster, weight forward, flip early, weight low and pump!

yeah the other point was gonna make is you need to approach with a little more aggression.

you need to be sailing downwind with enough speed to reduce your apparent wind, makes the rig light and flip easy. thats why gybing on wave faces is easier, as the wave helps you generate that speed downwind = light rig = easy flip.

so carve a bit more aggressively, and it should help you flip a bit earlier. everything will probably happen a little faster, so it may equal more stacks but if you aren't aggressive about it the carve gybe won't happen unless you have 'perfect' conditions.

also I find that raking the rig back a little as i enter the gybe and looking around the mast into the corner helps get the turn a little tighter, without really sacrificing any entry speed. you don't have to go full laydown, thats really just for laughs.

last thing is, don't sail long reaches, gybe more = more practise = better gybes

short version [remembering the long version is hard when sailing]: go fast, carve a bit more aggressively, flip early, pump to get out fast!

Looks like there'll be ample opportunity to practice this weekend (fingers crossed).

swoosh said...

yeah the other point was gonna make is you need to approach with a little more aggression.

not if the problem is weighting the tail, then trying to turn more aggressively may result in weighting the tail more

I just think may be better to know what the problem is first as if he already has a problem then suggesting "more aggressive turning" will just make him do what he is already doing - just more forcefully but still wrong?
I dunno, just a thought

Find flat water, and lean down on the boom until you flip the rig.

Wet Willy said...

Those videos which show you all the steps...they miss one thing - you've got to RIDE that board around the corner like a skateboard or surfboard; really be actively riding the board at that moment coz the sail ain't doing $h!t for you. Don't just think about the next step, control the board as you turn...you can keep tons of speed...

This was one thing I realised for myself after a long time. Coming from a sailing background and never having surfed I had no clear idea that you need to actively steer the board all the way through the turn. I'm only starting to do that now and things are improving to the point that, at least in the waves, I can select my path through the turns instead of just slamming it through.

best tip i ever got was dont look at your sail.. keep looking at where you want to go..

I'm just learning to gybe so I'm no expert but it does sound like you're stalling because the rig flip is too late.
Bear away before carving, it helps get your weight forward so you're not stalling the board. Really get that front arm straight and sheet in with the back hand to depower the sail and help keep that weight forward.
Flip when the rig goes light.

Easier said than done. I'm still working on it.

Windxtasy said...

I'm just learning to gybe so I'm no expert but it does sound like you're stalling because the rig flip is too late.
Bear away before carving, it helps get your weight forward so you're not stalling the board. Really get that front arm straight and sheet in with the back hand to depower the sail and help keep that weight forward.

I recall recently reading something about gybing by Guy Cribb, which stated that nearly all successful gybes start with the front arm being straight.
I had a successful gybe on sunday, but can't remember what I did right

This really helped me

www.guycribb.com/userfiles/documents/The%20Twist.pdf

If your gybes suck Ian then mine suck more You can borrow my cribby DVD, it is gold but for me I just need to sail more

I have had the problem of gybing, flipping too late and coming to a grinding hault. What fixes this for me is bearing off first and getting a good amount of speed, then gybe and flip as soon as you are down wind. The speed you get helps glide through the gybe. Then you sail for ages on big kit, then go onto small kit and your timing is all wrong ! Gotta love this sport

fitz66 said...

I find the one thing that helps is to start the foot change as soon as the nose of the board has gone through down wind, this means the rig flips early and you are powered on a broad reach. Plus what everyone said about pushing down on the boom, lean forward and look where you are going not at your hands.

Have just been out doing some skate-boarding, thinking about this, and came i to post exactly that.
It does not matter what sport you are doing, it's always the same. YOu will always wind up going where you are looking.
The biggest trap is to look at the gear in front of you, be it the tips of your skis (took me 2 full days of instruction recently to stop doing that, board and sail, skateboard, or worse still, the front of the jet-ski (which is exactly where the girl who ran over the windsurfer was looking, everyone does it at first).
When you do that, you are not really looking anywhere, so you go nowhere.
Too much focus on the rig-flip only makes that problem worse. You wind up staring at the rig, and thinking about the rig, and the board dribbles all over the place. Peter Hart used to call that the "three county gybe", as rail pressure came on and off, and the board wandered off downwind, running out of speed. Whenever I have a bad gybe, that is always the reason.

It's all about the carve. Get the carve right, and the rig-flip will take care of itself.

Tonight I was practising cross-stepping on a longboard, which involves a lot of footwork. Staring at my feet meant I kept losing balance and falling off.
As soon as I started looking where I was going, instead of where I was putting my feet, I stopped falling off and the foot changes were easy, because I was well balanced.
It's all about the carve.

sboardcrazy said...

sausage said...

Front straight arm tends to keep your sail and you more upright (and forward) which in turn retains some of the power right into the turn. Leaning back is of course a no no. Three things to remember - commit, commit, commit.

On the subject of rig flip I sail in really rough conditions and sometimes it is easier to plane out of the gybe clew first and once you have your feet in a good position to deal with the messed up conditions then flip the rig. If you watch pro slalom races you will see them flipping very late indeed. Of course those guys are pros. In flatter conditions I tend to flip the rig much earlier (board 90degrees to wind /exactly downwind) which gives me good power out of the turn.

PS - I used to gybe with an underhand grip (leading hand) but there was a thread here years ago espousing the benefits of an overhand position. Took me a while to change but an overhand position is the only way to go.

Guy cribb says to grab the other side of the boom underhand as you can reach further back.I don't do it but it makes sense.

Yes that's right (apologies I didn't quite clarify). Palm down (overhand) on gybe entry then grab palm up (underhand) on change over. You can effectively still be holding both sides of the boom for a split second doing it this way.

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