Depending on your level you should be using one type of up-haul or another. In the initial stages, when we rely a lot on the up-haul to maintain our stability on the board when lifting the sail out of the water, we need a rope that is not elastic. If we lift the sail up with and elastic rope, the control over the sail will be greatly reduced as when we pull the sail towards us, some of that energy is lost in the elasticity of the rope.
Beginner Up-Haul
These are a rigid rope that is attached to the boom and has an elastic rope that goes from the center of the up-haul rope to the mastfoot. Since there is a loose piece of rope dangling near the mast base they are not practical for high speeds, especially with choppy water as the loose end will be flapping around and hitting the sail all the time.
Advanced Up-Haul
Once we can do the water-start we are less reliant on the up-haul. We may only need one in circumstances where the wind drops so much that we cannot do a water-start any more. For these cases we use an elastic rope as it will be close to the mast the whole time that we are sailing and not be a nuisance.
The downside to this is that when we lift the sail we don’t have a direct response of the sail. This means that when we start to lift the sail, the rope stretches first and then starts to lift the sail out of the water. If as we are lifting up the sail, a bit of chop hits us, or a small wave, or we just lose our balance a little bit, we have a harder time to stabilise ourselves with the weight of the sail because as we pull, we first stretch the rope instead of the rope being pulled taught right away and helping us catch our balance again.
Summary
Until the water-start use a non-elastic rope as it will provide you with more control over the sail when hauling it up. After learning the water-start you should get an elastic one just in case you need it.
The duck gybe is one of the easiest extensions to our free-ride repertoire as it shows class without being very difficult. In essence we just take advantage of the relative wind being zero on the running course in order to flip the sail around the clew. Let me go into the step by step:
Grab the boom a little bit further back with the back hand
Once you are nearly on the running course (when your relative wind speed is 0) instead of releasing the back hand to shift the sail, release the front hand and simultaneously bring the clew of the sail forward with the back hand
Move the front hand to the back of the boom, closer to the clew than the back hand so that you can let go of the back hand
The sail should now already be with the mast on the correct side only that we are still holding on to it on the old side of the boom
The back hand (now to be the front hand) grabs the boom on the new side
The old front hand comes on to the new side of the sail and grabs the boom further forward than the previous hand
The new front hand grabs the boom close to the mast and we prepare to shift our feet
We Finnish positioning our feet correctly as we start to catch wind again on the new side
Push your hips forward and lean back with your shoulders to continue planing on the new course
The idea is to do all this sequence of steps with no wind in the sail. For this we must be going as fast as the wind so that the relative wind in zero. You can start practicing this manoeuvre by just bearing away onto a running course, shifting the sail around the clew and then continuing to shift it around the mast so that we can continue sailing into the same direction. This will allow you to focus only on the sail control and add the foot position and weight transfer once the sail handling is under control.
One last tip:
Don’t let the mast touch the water as it will get stuck in the water, make the kit come to a sudden halt and send you flying forwards, possibly getting hurt in the process. I call this the involuntary superman.
The main holiday time of the year is near and the biggest concern for any windsurfer becomes “where should I go for my windsurfing holiday?”. Now I could go for a cheap Bob Dylan pun here but instead I will aim for a practical answer. Or not so practical. Ultimately I would have to say that it all depends.
“On what does it depend?” I hear you ask. Well, here is the list you should take into account when choosing a windsurifng holiday destination.
The everlasting debate: Which site do you use for the wind forecast? I get asked so often which forecast service is the most applicable for El Médano. This has led me to make a short list of the forecast sites that we use in El Médano and has let me discover some additional wind forecast sites to decide upon the best one. I will be inspecting each in the style that sailingfast.co.uk has presented their list. I should add that I have only looked at the free versions of all these services. Since not all forecast sites are equally accurate for the same locations I have put them in sections describing their reach.
Clear bar chart in printout version showing evolution throughout the day
Negative
Wind forecast only
No gusts in the report
Only has a handful of spots
This one has appeared in the last few years and is slowly expanding. The aspect that makes the difference in this forecasting site is that they calculate the wind based on the regional model rather than the global model that the others use. This results in a difference in the results. In El Médano for example, since we have the volcano El Teide close by, if the wind comes from exactly north, we get nothing. However, when it comes from north-east the wind accelerates and comes in about 4 knots faster than what WindGuru or WindFinder predict.
Having to look at the forecast while moving the mouse somewhere else on the screen is cumbersome as you have to keep looking from the mouse cursor to the map and then back to hover over the next time slot(mouse over refreshes the map for the feature you are highlighting)
Wind speeds and wind gusts are separate maps making for more hassle
Wind direction arrows are hard to read
No list of wind speeds, gusts, etc.
Note that I have not talked about their accuracy but only about the features they provide. I hope to write an article on the accuracy in the future but that would require a bit more thorough research. Ultimately these are all computer calculated models which will have some margin of error. I recommend that you take the values for two or three sites and compare them to the actual wind for a month and making a good estimate for yourself how the forecast tends to result in real life. As I mentioned before, in El Médano we have become pretty sure that for north-east winds we must add around 4 knots to the forecast and that if the direction is north we will not be getting any wind despite the 30 knots on the north of the island.
Windsurfing used to be only one type of board fitted out with one type of sail, much like any other sailing category. Over the years however, as different competition styles and windsurfing spots were adopted, the equipment went through huge changes to be optimized for each category. Here are the 7 main categories that have evolved over the years. (more…)
These are a rigid rope that is attached to the boom and has an elastic rope that goes from the center of the up-haul rope to the mastfoot. Since there is a loose piece of rope dangling near the mast base they are not practical for high speeds, especially with choppy water as the loose end will be flapping around and hitting the sail all the time.
Once we can do the water-start we are less reliant on the up-haul. We may only need one in circumstances where the wind drops so much that we cannot do a water-start any more. For these cases we use an elastic rope as it will be close to the mast the whole time that we are sailing and not be a nuisance.
