The oldest person I have seen learning the planing 360 is an 80 year old Swede. Just in case anyone was wondering whether they are getting too old to learn new manoeuvres…
In essence, the planing 360 is a transition from a planing gybe into a helicopter-tack that is backed out of.
Here is the step by step breakdown:
Start off planing at speed.
Take the back foot out of the foot-strap (as you get more advanced you can attempt to leave it in the foot-strap throughout the manoeuvre)
Put pressure on the downwind rail with the back foot to start bearing away from the wind. Make sure you transfer your weight over the front foot..
As you bear away, sheet in the sail, keep the front arm straight and lean the sail to the back of the board.
As we turn through the downwind course, the power should start to increase on the other side of the sail. At this point we will probably have to move some of our body weight onto the back hand to be able to hold the power that increases in the sail.
Keeping our front arm straight and using the back hand to control the power of the wind in the sail we keep pushing the clew to the back of the board to make it luff up into the wind again.
Once it has gone through the beam reach we must continue pushing the clew to the wind instead of to the back of the board, mainly for our stability. If we were to continue pushing the clew to the back we will end up with no wind in the sail and just falling in. As we push the clew towards the wind and away from the back of the board it is important to get our weight on the front foot to avoid the board sinking and shooting out from under us.
Once the board has turned back into the wind (i.e.. the mast has come over the board again) it is time to sheet in again to push the board back onto the original direction. At this point it is important to push into the board horizontally as we sheet in to ensure we don’t just end up in a water-start position but upright and can start planing again as quickly as possible.
I often see a lot of people rigging and de-rigging their sails at the Surf Center, and every now and then I see someone who has very little idea of what they are doing. In this post I aim to provide a step-by-step guide for those who are a little lost.
Pulling on the downhaul to trim the sail can be most annoying part of rigging the sail. The two main factors that make this part of windsurfing unpleasant are the strain on the back and the trouble pulling the downhaul rope easily.
Sails used to have just a hole at the bottom next to the mast sleeve through which one would attach a downhaul pulley hook which allowed for the lines to run perpendicularly from the mast base to the sail.
For a few years this system was changed to the pulley set was in line with the sail but 90° to the mast base. This has been changed back to the original orientation by some manufacturers.
I’ve had a lot of people asking me how to sort the downhaul lines on their sail as it can get confusing since the mast base and the pulleys of the sail are usually at 90 degrees to each other meaning that the lines will most likely end up at various angles or twisted. (more…)
I wrote this post on past blog and thought I might as well post it here again. Sharing this occurred to me when I was checking a large number of boards at the Surf Center to make sure they were all good to be rented out again. Part of this check consisted of making sure that the foot-straps we screwed on tightly. Most people will not do this small change in technique as they usually only have to screw on one, maybe two, sets of foot-straps at a time and therefore will mot feel the consequences of doing it wrong. The way people usually screw on foot-straps is by turning the wrist. The wrist is pretty much the weakest part of the arm and with a long streak of continuous use it will get very sore and drag into the next days. Instead, rotate your arm around your shoulder. The benefit of this is threefold
We will get less tired as we are not using only the forearm but the entire arm.
We can screw the screw from jumping out of the slot as we can apply all our bodyweight onto it.
Our shoulders will not hurt after spending a lot of time screwing the foot-straps. This would not be the case for our forearms.
One more thing: Electrical screwdrivers are not a good idea to use as the screw holes are usually made out of plastic. An electrical screwdriver might rotate too fast and the heat from the fast rotation will cause the screw hole windings to go soft meaning they will be less resistant. This can result in the the foot-strap ripping out of the board on the water.
