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Gipptips (lång text)
Tjena.
Hittade följande text på min hårddisk. Det är lite gipptips jag fick av en kille på rec.windsurfing för ett tag sen.
Har inte testat det än, jag sparar mina gippförsök tills det blir lite varmare i vattnet. 🙂
Hoppas nån får nytta av det.
THE BEST JIBE TIP I EVER GOT by Mike FickI’m a world-class expert at jibes. Missing them, that is. I failed 10,392
carving jibe attempts (i.e., planing all the way from one beam reach to the
next) before a friend gave me THE jibing tip that became crucial to my
jibing and thus changed my life. I added another tip of my own that
significantly helps my board carve and sail jibe timing. Both are in this
jibe procedure that works for me in every type of carved (planing) jibe and
even in many subplaning jibes. Done right, this sequence lets me exit a
carved jibe going at least as fast as I entered it. It doesn’t require
memorizing a repertoire of handwork and footwork, because the same simple
handwork and footwork works from mundane to monster winds.1. Sail “faster than you’ve ever sailed”, ’til your eyes bleed, you pee your
pants, and your shadow is two seconds behind you. (If you don’t at least
feel like you’re going that fast, you don’t have time to bobble and recover
before you coast to a halt. Recovering from bobbles to complete a jibe is a
good sign that you’re developing a feel for jibes, rather than just
memorizing the steps.)
2. Bear off, still sheeted in, to gain even more speed and to steer from a
beam reach into a very broad reach. (A jibe is a 90-degree turn; you SAIL
through the first and last 45-degree segments of the total 180-degree turn.)
3. Move your back hand about a foot farther back on the boom, switch your
front grip to palm-up to greatly aid the second THROW you’ll see below,
unhook without disturbing the sail, and set your back foot on the rail
behind the front strap. You are still sheeted in, sailing in a broad reach
with your sail foot near the back of your board. (Some expert jibers bear
off still hooked in, letting the harness pull them forward into the correct
weight-forward position. The few times I’ve tried it felt good and worked
well, but it has obvious hazards.)
4. Now all in the space of about one or two heartbeats — virtually
simultaneously when possible — point your knees and chest further downwind
and into your turn, curtsey (you never bow; you CURTSEY, dropping your butt
towards your toes until your knees are bent 90 degrees and you’re looking
forward from BELOW the booms), aggressively move (or let the sail pull) your
weight forward towards your toes, thrust and lock your front elbow out
straight as though you were stiff-arming a tackler, tip that front hand (and
the mast) downwind as you bend your back elbow hard to sheet in until your
sail foot hits your back leg (this is oversheeting, to switch the power
off), look at the water maybe 50-100 feet out in front of you where you will
exit your jibe (I look at some distant landmark downwind to gauge my
progress in my turn and time my sail jibe), and lift your front heel to
force its arch into its strap. Your weight is riding evenly on the ball of
your front foot and your flat back foot, so you’re not carving the turn yet.
You’re still on a broad reach, ready to jibe your board, sail, and feet to
the new tack).If you were unable to oversheet because of too much backhand sail pressure,
you (a) waited too late to oversheet and/or (b) did not thrust the front
hand forward and into the turn. To correct this error, straighten that front
elbow and tip the mast into the turn dramatically at the same time you
oversheet. This shuts off the power in the sail like a kill switch and puts
you back in control. The only time you don’t want to oversheet is when
you’re not planing and need to use the sail to push your board through the
turn.So far this is all just normal, textbook, powered-up carved jibing. But here
is where my friend’s tip and my own addition helped my jibing in several
ways.FREEZE FRAME: Notice your arm’n’hand position; they’re cocked as though to
fire a bow and arrow at a target downwind of your present path (inside your
turn). Your back hand is cocked near your downwind shoulder as though it
were holding the bowstring and arrow feathers, your front hand is way out
there holding your bow and supporting the arrow. Both arms are cocked to
fire the arrow (spin the sail), but . WHEN should we jibe the sail?My own modification helped me time the sail jibe. I began shoving my hips
sideways into the turn HARD — as though trying to bump the car door closed
while standing beside it with my arms full. This carves a very tight, smooth
turn and puts my body into an excellent position to exit the turn with full
power on the new broad reach, maybe even automatically hooked and sheeted in
if everything falls into place well. This hip swing weights the leeward rail
to initiate and maintain the carve, and times the sail jibe (flip). Your
body should be arced into a pronounced C, with your hips leading the convex
side of the C into the turn.Because your front hand is as far in front of you as you can reach, yet you’re
thrusting your hips towards the new direction, you will feel like you’re
trying to surf your board in the opposite direction from where the sail is
going. The sail’s still heading west but your board is starting to head
east, so to speak. The cure, of course, is to jibe the sail and take it
along with you.Try it, but be forewarned; before you even have time to THINK about jibing
the sail, you will whip through the full 180 degrees in two heartbeats, get
backwinded, and crash. That’s a big improvement, because at least now you
carved (jibed) the board all the way through the turn. Now all you have to
do is jibe (flip) your sail and jibe (switch) your feet within that same
couple of heartbeats, and you’re jibin’! This is partly an issue of timing
the sail jibe somewhere within the board jibe.Piece ‘o cake:
5. Back to our sequence: at the same time you shove your hips into the turn,
before you’re pointing downwind, the pressure will leave your sail. NOW fire
the arrow [i.e., jibe (flip) the sail]. Just as the step jibe technique
calls for us to step forward at the same time we release the back hand, this
technique works best if we jibe the sail as we thrust the hip.Right here is where millions of carved jibe attempts fail. The magazines
once told us to release the back hand, grasp the mast, let the wind blow the
sail around the mast like a barn door blowing around its hinges as you coast
to a slog, and when the sail wanders around far enough you take the new side
of the boom and sail away.BS!
That has a MAJOR, fatal, flaw: If you outrun the true wind throughout your
jibe, as you should, there won’t BE any tailwind to push the sail around.
You feel tailwind only after you drop below the true wind speed, well on
your way to dropping off a plane, at which point you’re standing there at
zero speed holding a fully powered-up sail. In the 15th century this
position was known as a loaded catapult.The sailor, not the wind, should jibe the sail. We should SPIN that sucker
around its center of gravity like a top, not wait until we slow down so much
the tailwind pushes the sail around the mast like a $1,500 barn door. A jibe
is a very aggressive mindset and process which WE, not the wind, should
control.This is where Monte changed my life, when he said, “THROW, THROW, GRAB,
and GO!”Only the sailor can spin the sail inside its boom length; the wind’s surely
not going to do it. At the hip thrust, just as you feel you and the sail are
heading in opposite directions, you THROW the back of the boom away like a
hot shot-putt. A millisecond later — way before you complete that first
THROW — you THROW the front of the boom way across your face and past your
downwind ear, right into the new broad reach. Your mast hand motion is much
like throwing a pass to a receiver running right along your new broad reach
(your jibe exit path). (This is why you inverted the front-hand grip; this
second throw is much easier with your palm up.) The sail spins untouched
before your heart beats again, leaving the new side of the boom floating in
the air in front of you. GRAB it with both hands and GO (i.e., sheet in and
sail away on a screaming broad reach, often sailing faster that you were
going before you jibed). With luck and practice, you will switch your feet
simultaneously within or immediately after the second in which the sail
rotates, and will exit accelerating hard in the new broad reach. You should
lose no perceptible speed in the whole process because a) it’s all off the
wind and b) you’re coasting unpowered for only a second or two.As soon as or before I shove my hip into the turn, I stare at a spot on the
horizon just past downwind. If I haven’t spun the sail by then, I’m late and
must stop the carve and spin the sail NOW, or I’m going to be on the new
beam reach before I’ve jibed the sail, and grabbing a sail at full power on
a beam reach before getting that back foot strapped in is asking for a
catapult.Jibing quickly like this doesn’t give you TIME to lose speed, hit three rows
of swell, and lose your balance or crash. I don’t think my sail flip, from
throwing the back hand away to sheeting in on the new tack, takes a full
second when I do it right. The whole Throw/Throw/Grab/Go business is just
one continuous, fluid two-handed sweep of my hands and forearms, as much
like a Kung Fu move as I can make it. The same process works for 3.0s and
for 6.8s; the 6.8 just takes harder THROWS and takes two heartbeats rather
than one.The first one of those I tried was the greatest revelation and revolution in
my windsurfing life. No more barn doors eating up precious seconds, mph, and
two boom-lengths of space while I fight for balance over three row of chop!
This is partly why leading ABK instructors have begun teaching this
boom-to-boom approach to jibing.Oh, yeah — the feet. My feet are too far from my brain to access all them
complicated textbook footwork options, let alone select a method in
mid-jibe. The step jibe, for example, requires we pull the front foot out of
its strap until its heel crosses the board centerline, maintain inside rail
pressure with that front heel, and step forward with the back foot while we
do several OTHER things with our hands. That footwork was too demanding for
me. Besides, the step jibe’s purpose is to get our weight forward to avoid
sinking the tail after we slow down, and we want to accelerate, not slow
down, in our jibes6. I find it simpler to just take my weight off both feet and switch ’em
simultaneously during any old half-second I’m not steering with them. That
works at any speed, in any chop or swell, overpowered or underpowered,
planing or slogging, Sunday or Wednesday, before or after the sail jibe, in
any instant I’m not footsteering. If I’m barely planing, I slip my new front
foot further forward into the step jibe position before reapplying weight to
it. Unweighing my feet and jibing them simultaneously sent my jibe success
rate way up. It ranges from merely sliding both feet across the deck on
smoother water to hopping a foot off the deck in huge chop. I’ll jibe my
feet before, during or (usually) immediately after jibing the sail —
whenever it seems natural; no thinking required.On my bad days I might still miss half my jibes. Here are my more common
errors:
* A face-plant inside the turn because I bent at the waist – bowing rather
than curtseying into my turn. (I can’t perceive that error until too late
since losing an inner ear to surgery.)
* Getting overpowered and pulled forward, maybe even launched, when coming
out of my jibe if I jibe the sail too late and/or carved back up to the new
beam reach before sheeting in. Fixing my eyes on that landmark just past
downwind and spinning the sail simultaneously with the hip thrust stops
that.
* Getting bounced around and unbalanced and losing my carve in very rough
water because I failed to get that front hand WAY out in front of me and
tipped into the turn. Now that we have the front hand palm-up,
straight-arming the rig like this is how we get our weight forward onto the
front of the board to stop bouncing.
* Getting tossed in big chop because I didn’t bend my knees DRASTICALLY.
* Being unable to oversheet because I bore off the wind too far before
trying to oversheet. The save? Shove the mast WAY forward and inward as I
oversheet (this shuts off the power instantly), or foot-swerve back to a
beam reach, oversheet, then resume the jibe all in one quick slash.
* Losing track of where I was in the turn because I watched my gear or the
water right in front of my board rather than looking where I was going. You
must look where you intend to go, rather than where you are, because our
boards (and cars and mountain bikes) follow our gaze. Do you look at your
dashboard or far ahead into the turn to steer your car? I get my best
results looking at that spot on the horizon just past downwind.
* Sinking the downwind rail with too much rail pressure for inadequate board
speed.
* Thinking too much. I have my best successes when I get PISTOFF and
JUSTDOIT rather than engaging my brain. My brain apparently hasn’t the
capacity to think real time about the dozen or so steps required in a tight
carved jibe on a small board. A bigger board and sail slow the process
sufficiently that I can think it through.Textbook footwork and all that boom-to-mast-to-boom handwork works for
millions of people. But 1) I couldn’t make them work; 2) they leave other
millions losing their plane before completing their jibe; and 3) they are
not as inherently fast and tight because they involve more steps, they swing
the sail through twice the space, and they require greater coasting
(unpowered) time and space. Sarah James, a leading ABK instructor, now
teaches boom-to-boom jibing instead of the old, more complicated,
cumbersome, slower boom-mast-boom method.The boom-to-boom sail jibe helps cure the following aborted carved jibe that
I see every five seconds at the amateur end of the Gorge’s Hatchery: They
enter the jibe fast, DELIBERATELY sail off the wind until the board stops
planing and the sail yanks their back hand, release the back hand, let the
sail take its own sweet time blowing around the mast as the board coasts to
a standstill, then grab the new side of the boom and try to get planing
again. While that is a jibe, it is NOT a carved, or planing, jibe, by
definition. And it’s tough to do in big chop.Aggression and commitment are virtually required to carve planing jibes. The
wind has already done its job in getting us up to speed; the actual jibe is
OUR responsibility, AFTER which the wind comes back into play.Try this. It sure made my decade.
.
Mike m/
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