hi nebbian,

you definately shouldn't be slipping off. if you own a production board this can be typical. custom boards tend not to suffer from this.

the answer is to apply the glue on grip as you suggest

or to apply a new finish coat. a board repairer can apply the new finish coat to the whole deck area which in effect re-grips the board.

what is your board?

Nebbian,

Just found out I've been doing it all wrong!!! This link is quite good.

boardcrazy.com.au

Looking forward to getting out today and giving it a go. Hopefully it will all come together now. Looks like a steady 15-20 headed for Sydney Airport this arvo.

Regards,
Harrow.

Slipping in the middle of a gybe is sooo frustrating!!!!!
You definately need better grip, a lot of production boards have very inferior grip, wears smooth quickly, if it was any good to start with.

The grip on the deck of my boards, is castor sugar sprinkled on to a thin layer of resin, very easy to do and works well. There's profesional stuff on the market, but I think you have to buy much more than you need for one board.
If your deck is a plastic finish epoxy will stick better, but unless you pay extra for a UV stable type it will go brown with sunlight.
If you've got a painted finish, surfboard quality finish/filler resin is the way to go, it's a bit harder, and doesn't go brown, (and it's cheaper). The trick is to get the right thickness, too thin sugar doesn't stick, too thick it takes a more sugar than needed, and adds to the weight. From memory about 150 ml should do the whole deck of an average board.

Was watching my gybes today, and my back foot is further back than I thought, half way between front and backstraps on the rail, instead of just behind front strap. To make the gybe more snappy, put more weight on the back foot.

i'm a booties man.

thing i was told - most production boards are made for the european market where the water is cold. every1 wears booties. a nice grippy deck wears out booties so they make it slippery instead

problem i have now is that the new booties have a thick rubber pad on each side, just back from the toes. this makes it very difficult to get into the footstraps as the booty sticks as your pushing your foot in

Thanks to all for the replies. For the record my board is a 2001 Mistral Flow V105 (105 litres, looks like this one: http://www.mamboo.ru/front/object-prn.jsp?OBJ=svu987156563541

The thing that gets me is that no-one I see out there who can gybe has put extra grip on their board... so I'm obviously doing something wrong. I've even watched someone duck gybe on my board. So frustrating, I know I'm doing something wrong but just can't get it... More practice needed I think, I was very close last session, managed to get around a couple of times but dropped the sail on the flip. Perhaps I'm not doing the ballerina step properly.

Also perhaps grumple has something there... but how do you not think about it when you're doing your best not to fall off?

I'm still thinking about putting some deck grip on though, it would help a lot when in sub-planing conditions.

This week looks good on the forecast, it's building all the way to 35 knots on Saturday!!
Should have plenty of practice falling off in high winds

Neb- THinking that you must BANK your board into the gybe until centrifugal force balances the sideways slipping tendency of the feet. Your effective bodyweight can effectively double during a hard carve, so thisw becomes quite critical. It seems that the most effective turn when just blasting back and forth is the crash gybe, where you backwind the sail to stop you dead without losing any distance to windward, hopefully ending up in a perfect position to pull yourself back to planing. (Not as much fun, though :) )

Nebbian,

when you push the rig forwards are you rocking forward onto the balls of your feet and into the turn?