I've had a bit of decent formula wind lately (no, that's not a contradiction), so I've been trying to get those gybes happening.

Can...NOT keep the bugger planing right through.

Tried keeping the sail open and powered as long as possible, tried pointing the inside foot forward and not digging the rail too deep, tried pumping all the way round, tried a wide radius (which seems to help), and even dabbled in applying mast foot pressure...but I still end up stopping.

Any tips? Yes, I've already read the Boards mag article.

hardie said...

if your goal is to plane out of the gybe, then what I have found with wide style boards is you need to keep the hull flat, with the rig change happening with the board sailing downwind. The tighter you carve a wide board the sharper it may turn (in choppy waters can rail grab and get ugly) but you lose too much board speed and drops off the plane. So you gotta get very technical.

You speak, o master, and I listen.

Planing-gybes on a FW board are certainly possible, but it is purely technique based and very different to the technique used for gybing slalom boards etc ...

There's a more in depth article about it here if you read down a little ...

carbonsugar.com/technique/the-learning-plateau-and-how-to-climb-off-part-ii/

But basically, don't keep the sail 'open', you want to tuck it a little at the beginning like you would a slalom board to keep the rail pressure initiated throughout the turn. The rest of the gybe is about shifting your weight and the sails weight at the exact right times to keep the momentum of the board and whilst doing this to 'ooch-pump' the board with your legs (ie, like you pump a surfboard in small sloppy surf to keep on the wave). Read the above article for a better breakdown of each step... the rest is just practice, practice, practice.

Once you've got it, its actually a cool sensation to plane out of a gybe past people in 8 knots... haha.