Hi, I am a middle aged or so dude trying to get back into sailboarding. I was very active for about 12 years in the 80s and 90s just before the short boards became the "thing". Before anyone asks, no I cant afford a new fibreglass board, or anything that goes with it, I am lucky for the storage that allows me to keep my stuff.

Over about 3 years and about $300 dollars (my budget)
I have collected the following:
F2 Comet with carbon mast and al boom, 5.5m2 sail
Bombora 284 complete with 3 sails of various size in good nick and fibreglass mast.

I looked for a drifter windurfer/long board for many years, but found they got trashed early.

I have sailed them both with commitment and while I can have some fun with this gear, I definitely missed out on the transition from drifter to water start/planer. I water start, although it takes a fair bit out of me, and for the life of me I cant work out how to tack or gybe these things properly. I understand there is footwork involved, but years of research cant find where the tricks are learnt.

Any advice?

short boards are extremely hard to tack, I've been sailing them now for 35 years and still can't do it, ( not that I've tried very much).

Gybing is the thing with short boards, flat water and lots of speed helps, and of course the floatyer the board the better. At slow speeds carving with the feet is less effective, use the sail more. As the speed gets higher use more foot pressure on the inside rail, and less sail scooping.

The hardest bit is the transition, flipping the sail and swapping the feet. There are so many things that can go wrong here, that it's much better having somebody who knows advise you.

But the less powered you are and the slower you go the later you can flip the sail, keeping what power you have on through the gybe, and flipping after the gybe has finished. Going fast and well powered, you need to kill the power in the sail before you flip at about the half way mark.

And as an aside.
The term fibreglass board is ambiguous these days, most people take it to mean the old medium density polyurethane core covered by a few layers of fibreglass and polyester resin laminate. You'd be extremely hard pressed finding a new one of these. Typical construction these days is a low density polystyrene core with a high density foam fibreglass/epoxy sandwich. Note the fibreglass is the same in both, it's the core and resin that's different, not the fibreglass. Although, there's also more exotic materials like carbon, and in some cases kevlar being used as well.

here is all the footwork for you - basically "do the twist"
www.guycribb.com/userfiles/documents/The%20Twist.pdf
If you watch some videos as well the pictures will make more sense.

The best tip I can offer is practice the footwork and rig flip hand changes (google "boomshaka") on dry land until they become automatic, before trying it on the water where you have no time to think.

Thanks for the reply. For starters I didn't think these boards were classified as short! I thought this was the transition period to the wave jumping phenomenon that I completely missed.

i tried "carving gybes" with the Bombora on a lake for days, but a guy on a 2 year old rig explained politely that "there is no rocker on that board, you are wasting your time with that gear"

As an aside, I got the comet (with retractable centreboard) after trying to manoeuvre the Bombora for so long, and although it pointed better, I still couldn't tack it properly.

Question - how do you get back to point A if you can only gybe?

P.S. The fibreglass Is the mast. An old one from the early 90s

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Windxtasy said..
here is all the footwork for you - basically "do the twist"
www.guycribb.com/userfiles/documents/The%20Twist.pdf
If you watch some videos as well the pictures will make more sense.

The best tip I can offer is practice the footwork and rig flip hand changes (google "boomshaka") on dry land until they become automatic, before trying it on the water where you have no time to think.

Thanks will try next outing

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blasto said..
Thanks for the reply. For starters I didn't think these boards were classified as short! I thought this was the transition period to the wave jumping phenomenon that I completely missed.
>>>

Well there you go, I'm the opposite completely missed the transition stage. So sorry, my advice isn't a lot of good to you. Especially if you have a dagger board, foot pressure has to go on the outside rail not the inside with one of those. But without a dagger board, I think a bigger board should be gybable getting your weight back as far as possible to get most of the board out of the water, and using the sail to spin the board around.

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blasto said..


i tried "carving gybes" with the Bombora on a lake for days, but a guy on a 2 year old rig explained politely that "there is no rocker on that board, you are wasting your time with that gear"

Eh? You can do one-handed duck gybes on a 13 foot board with no tail rocker if you have the technique right. Claiming that a 284 could not be gybed is utterly illogical - did the guy think that when it was new everyone just hopped off and swam the board around after every reach? Even the Bombora X-it carves beautifully if you have the technique right.

Many people seem to lean back too far, which stalls the board out, especially when gybing longboards. Leaning forward as you gybe can engage the rail and keep the board flat to keep it planing fast through the curve.

Do NOT think that a longboard, "transition" board or board with a centreboard up cannot be carve gybed; almost anything designed after about 1981 can be carve gybed. and even the original Windsurfers with daggerboards could be carve gybed although the board was kept flatter than with other boards.
You can stay upwind by doing a tight gybe and heading back on a close reach.

What State are you in and get down to the local spot for a bit of help with technique & kit. Good luck

I'm not sure I'd call that original windsurfer a true carve gybe, most of the turning force is coming from the sail. It's either a flair gybe or a flarve. But it can still go round very quick.



This is a carve gybe, mast stays perpendicular to the board, leaning in to the turn, a flair gybe is the opposite, the mast leans out of the turn.

The mistake I see a lot of people learning to gybe is that from the moment they think about gybing, they start slowing down. So as they start to sail down wind they are considerably slower than the wind, so they hang onto the sail and lean back, slowing down even more, so they lean further back. By the time they get to flip the sail they are doing 5 knots in 15 knots of wind so the sail just get ripped away.

Instead try and keep the board flat and maintain speed and release the sail earlier than you thought possible. This way you will hopefully be doing 12 knots in 15 knots of wind so the apparent wind is barely noticeable. Then wave your arms and legs around and see if you can clean up the mess.

You might even find there is time to drag your hand in the water...

My wifes best girlfriend had a Comet for years. I sailed it quite a bit. Both of us could do very nice carve Gybes on it with the centreboard up. Certainly easier to Gybe than my longer raceboard at the time.

It was also one of the easier boards of that time to tack, being a full floater, at least for those of us under 75 kilos.

PS. as BSN101 says, it really helps people give you good advice if you at least put your state location in your profile.

Blasto ,you can gybe anything ,but the bigger boards are harder ,don't leave the centre board down .walk back on the tail .i found was easier .
tacking is a thing I still do ,even on my 105 litre board ,I just practise it because its a handy move to have at times
the smaller the board for tacking the further back to the tail your foot goes .step on the nose and it sinks .

welcome back to the sport ...just give it time and it will fall in place ,but new gear is easier to use and sail .
its lighter .its just like cars ,they are a lot better than the earlier days ...

Blasto, where you at? Sounds like someone from around here. Same boards etc. Golden beach Caloundra. Drop me a line if so.

All good advice but especially +1 for remery's post.

It simply has to be fast, so the sail is light (no wind in it) when flipping.

I think one good way is to get going fast, then oversheet a bit, lean forward a bit and carve the board around almost 180deg. Forget the feet the rig everything- until you can plane all the way around in an arc and then get back winded. You will get pushed over on your arse, but importantly now you are maintaining speed through a gybe. Do it until you can plane thru every time.

Then, do the same but let the back hand go at the downwind point (or a tiny bit before) and keep the planing carve going. Do that a few times.
Now you are carving and flipping the rig at the right time. No more landing on your arse due to backwinding.

Do it another 100x fully planing and almost scary fast as you enter the gybe. Don't forget to oversheet as you start and lean forward - it stops the nose bounce that would unsettle things.

THEN go look at all this yoochoob stuff about footswitch and doing the shuffle, the spin, the step strap farkin whatever some instructor has come up with as a name.
I think they are a great help but people are too reliant upon the technique videos. You will never carve gybe until you can enter the turn planing and and keep it planing. Else you end up standing on the tail like remery said, and thinking about footwork that you saw on youchoob that would make a ballroom dancing star think twice whilst thinking about the rig flip video you saw at same time. Its too hard mentally.

NO go fast, carve and keep speed up. Then do all that stuff.

OTOH- those are very difficult boards to gybe. The guy who said impossible due to rocker can be ignored though. Its do-able but damn hard. If you are in WA I'll sort you out with something better for nothing if I can (others here would also)

Any board you can float on can be rope gybed at the very least.

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decrepit said..
I'm not sure I'd call that original windsurfer a true carve gybe, most of the turning force is coming from the sail. It's either a flair gybe or a flarve. But it can still go round very quick.



This is a carve gybe, mast stays perpendicular to the board, leaning in to the turn, a flair gybe is the opposite, the mast leans out of the turn.

It's the same mechanism; the Windsurfer is turning because of the carving effect of the inside rail. The rig angle is because the geometry of the rig and the lower speed changes the way you handle the rig flip, and because you tilt the board more gently due to the lower rocker and other factors.

Board and rig angle and everything else vary from board to board and condition to condition, but the One Design in that pic is still carving and I know that for a fact. There is no turning effect created by a rig on the inside of the turn as in the pic. A planing turn driven by the rig (what I called the Elvis Gybe) rather than by carving the rail was quite different.

Comets came in two lengths: 315 and 340. Can't remember the volumes exactly, but the 315 was about 150 liters, and the 340 about 170. I owned both. The 315 was named Comet Slalom and had a powerbox. Both came with daggerboards and slalom-located footstrap inserts.

I learned waterstarting, footstraps, foot steering, harness, planing, and carve jibing on the 315 (with the daggerboard left on the beach) with a 7.5 sail. The first time I used a 10.0 sail (a Gaastra with cams) with an aluminum 537 cm mast was on the 340. It was an aircraft carrier, but it worked.

I appreciate all the helpful tips, thanks heaps. I guess I will stick to the comet since my complete lack of ability to point the Bombora might leave me out at sea... at least with the board down on the comet I can get almost 45deg to the wind (even if I do have to fall off to tack!). Am about 90 kg so think maybe my slalom is struggling to stay on the plane while trying to gybe with my technique. A lot of tips are making retrospective sense now, as I am sinking the tail while wrestling the sail. Will post back once I have another go.

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Mobydisc said..
Any board you can float on can be rope gybed at the very least.

That's what I started trying but what to do with the feet, ie how to swap from one side to the other was although watched on youtube, hard for me to reproduce. Too many new skills to learn at once I think, and at the speed is a bit intimidating. I think I need some sort of progressive tutorial.

not.giving.up, will make this gear sing if it takes another 2 years...