As a beginner wavesailor, I'm having trouble with the bottom turn. I come charging down the face, keep my back foot in the strap and lean over to do something like a gybe, and one of two things happen:

1) The board spins out and starts pointing far more upwind than I want it to, I wash off loads of speed, stop planing, and am lucky to escape the approaching whitewater monster, or:

2) The rail grips, but the board feels really wobbly because only the balls of my feet are touching the deck.

In a normal gybe I've got my back foot out of the strap and so my heel is touching the deck as well, and don't have either of the problems mentioned.

Any ideas on how to combat these problems?

Yes go back to QLD

wavesailing is very technical, for starters, your board may not be ideal, you certainly want a board that facilitates this, so a wave board , which has rocker and rails designed for turning on waves helps.

Technique wise, try heading down the line (along the wall of the wave downwind)rather than shooting down the wave face at first, this requires less of a hard carve, and gets you used to sailing the wall of the wave.

If at Corro's early in the day it's a bit onshore which makes bottom turning even more technical.

Weighting on your feet is a style thingo, my style is to weight the back foot first to initiate the carve, then transfer weight to front foot on wave face heading for lip.

Hand position on boom and sail positioning also impt, depending on angle of wind to wave face, more onshore winds require, hands on boom coming close together near mast so you don't get back winded, and the flexibility to change hand positions.

I'll let others respond, I'm no wave expert

1) spin out can occur if your not banking the board enough. You need to really get it over on the rail and carve the bottom turn. Its easy to think your banking the board but in reality just lening into your rig...result spin out.

2) make sure your feet are all the way into your foot straps, not just your toes like when your flat water blasting. Your back foot should be in the centre of the board when in the footstrap and you will not have the heal lift, wobble issue.

hope this helps a bit.

I'm hardly an expert on waves (aren't they what you give your friends when your leaving) but here is a tip I heard which makes sense. NOTE: depends on your type of board.

Set your footstraps up assymetrically. That is set up your back footstrap in the holes closest to the waveface and the corresponding front strap as close to the centre of the board as possible. This places the arch of your back foot directly over the fin giving your heel and toe "feel" it also places your front foot closer to the centre of the board to help drive you back up the face.

The front footstrap on your "outbound" side can be set up outboard to correspond with the now outboard backstrap and gives your drive on the way out to sea.


As I said, sounds good in theory, yet to try it in practice.

Thanks guys, will try those ideas this week.

Cheers

Nebs,
What re you doing surfing the web anyway. Off to Corros with you.
I'm sure the scenery will be much better

BTW, the Assymetric footstrap setup is good, especially if your board has a wider tail/Freestyle Wave rocker.

Enjoy!

Make your footstraps huge and offset.
As you start to go down the face lean forward as in a gybe apply pressure downward on the mast to hold more of the front rail in the water.
Committ ! to leaning in to the centre of the arc also like in a gybe.
Gradually sheet out a bit as you go around to open your sail up to catch more wind.
Use a waveboard.
Sand the fin with 320 wet and dry.
Get a good fin and the correct size for your weight and the tail width of the board. eg Select or MFC.
Get an experienced person to try your gear to see if it is technique or equipment.

Nebs, where are you mate???
As hardie says, corro in the middle of the day is very hard to ride down the line, even for experienced sailors, it's too onshore and you loose too much wind power, it's more a matter of surfing it, and for that you need a consistent steep face, corros left handers are very hard to judge, just when you think a nice vertical face is going to develop it goes flat on you.

If your footstrap positions are adjustable, move the back strap as far forward as it goes, and as before said off set it so it's closer to the wave face. Loosen it up as much as possible but make sure your foot can't slide all the way through, that can result in a broken leg!

The other thing is, that it's not imperative to stay in the back strap, it certainly helps when going for moves off the lip, but you aren't there yet.
Try taking your back foot out and putting just in front of back strap right on the inside rail for the bottom turn, then you can slide it back to center of board for the cut back. I rode like that for quite a while, (old surfing technique) and still do sometimes at corro, it helps when underpowered in onshore mushy waves, lets you get your weight a bit further forward. As your technique progresses you can go back to being in the back strap.

Anyway have fun, and keep posting your progress.

In addition to the above good advice:

everyone says weight forward etc. Yes.... but how? One good tip hardly anyone mentions is to extend the front arm. Look at JP in down the line conditions and see how far he gets the mast forward thru that extension of the front arm. Moving the rear hand back also helps you get the rig forward, and also oversheet at the start. That weights the forward part of the rail and makes your bottom turn FAST and no bouncing around. In DTL conditions you know when you get it right because the bottom turn will be so damn fast you blow out the back of the wave at the top... you aren't ready for it and miss the cutback!!!

Second: mast forward for DTL and back for onshore. That is a bit board dependent, and on my EVO makes a big big difference but also means totally different techinique too so may leave it for later depending what board you're on

bendz zee kneez, and leeeeean into it

start turn with weight at the front of both your feet, like surfing, practise on some swells out the back

If the wave isn't too sucky,
try doing a hard-carve pivotting top-turn instead of the bottom-turn.
Following this, you will atleast be heading in the right direction along the wall,
apply some front foot pressure, lean forward,,,,,
and then it's downhill all the way.
zoom zoom zoom.

I had your original 2 problems aswell and some things that have helped me in WA conditions are:

1. Move the straps (front right and rear) forward.
2. Open up the Front Right and Rear straps to get the feet in the centre.
3. Concentrate on applying Mast Foot Pressure with your front hand weighing down the board through the boom to stop the nose bouncing, just like gybing in chop.
4. Benz zee kneez as said before.
5. Be aggressive. Channel Scottie McKercher, your in his backyard.
6. Open up the back hand when heading back to the lip (don't pop your left shoulder but really stretch it out)
7. Be patient. Hopefully I am not the only slow one but after 2 seasons of total concentration on JUST the bottom turn you can start to think about your second move.... the top turn.

waveslave, think back to your poley days and explain.

Are you saying to drop in?
Head down the line on the peak and then carve into the wave?

That will really help me with speed and give some "pop" when aiming at a lip but will be difficult until late afternoon when it swings offshore.

Ash

Wow, thanks for the detailed replies!

Just for the record, these problems were encountered at Lancelin (logo to 3/4 mast, cross shore) and Green Head (head to logo, cross shore).

I guess it's just like learning to gybe all over again, oh gawd this will take me a while. As a computer programmer I treat my body the same way, one step follows another, change one little thing and I'm completely stuffed.

So the main thing is to get the back toes closer to the inside rail, and lean forward more. Ze knees were bent, that was why only the balls of my feet were touching the board! I'll try stuffing around with the footstraps, that sounds like it may help.

Will keep you posted.

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ash said...

waveslave, think back to your poley days and explain.

Are you saying to drop in?
Head down the line on the peak and then carve into the wave?

It has been 7 years since the pole but one never forgets.

No,
Don't even take the drop if the wave is full-ish,
just pivot turn at the top of the wave and then lean forward,
and fang down the line while edging into subtle bottom-turns as you race along the bottom of the wall.
You need to get a feeling for rail-to-rail riding.

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waveslave said...

ash said...

waveslave, think back to your poley days and explain.

Are you saying to drop in?
Head down the line on the peak and then carve into the wave?

It has been 7 years since the pole but one never forgets.

Rectal pain?

i'll say one thing, Buy the "Pro Secrets" DVD on wave riding, tells you everything, helped my bottom turns when it's a bit onshore, all i was doing wrong was have my hips about 6 inches in the wrong spot, now have twice as much speed to carve back up the wave.

I'm a beginner wavesailor like nebbian, but would like to comment on the bottomturning by Goya in the videolink somone posted above.

It looks to me that in order to tighten the turn he first sheets out a bit and just lets his upper body fall forwards into the the turn. He then soon sheets in hard, I guess by simultaneusly pushing on his front arm and pulling with the back. This tips the rig forwards and into the turn which loads up the rail and tightens turn. He then lets the rig pull his upper body even further forwards/into the turn while starting to push on the clew hand to open the sail again. It all looks very complicated and I guess one just have to experiment with agressive sheeting and body leans as a way of varying the turning radius.

Is that you Sinbad ????

its a good day for knitting

No, and I would like to know why you ask. All I did was to take a very close look at the video and try and understand what's going on.

Confirmed.

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Rider5 said...

Is that you Sinbad ????

That's not Brucie aka "Sinbad" aka dozens and dozens of other aliases.

Brucie does not know how to write using more than one paragraph. He also cannot write coherent and cohesive sentences.

A good start is by practicing lay down style gybes, you will find the same rig position will serve you well in a bottom turn. For me it's all about the rig, upper body and hand position. These things made the biggest difference to my bottom turns.

Get the rig forward and layed over, with a bit of oversheet. Get your upper body over the rig as you get into the turn, this will load up the leeward rail and give to a good constant raduis turn. And finally move you hands around, well your back hand mostly. I move my hand back for the bottom turn, which enables a hard sheet in to initiate the turn and forward when coming off the top. That will sheet you out and you end up surfing through your carve or smack.

Also I am not a big fan of changing the footstrap position, just means more work to get on the water if conditions have changed. I have my straps reasonably loose, which took a while to get used to.

I will say I learnt to wavesail with the back foot out of the strap, so that would probably be a good place to start.

The give away is how you use such big words such as coherent and cohesive and then manage to put such big words into one sentance, plus the users is usually only has a few posts.

My tip is .....write about 30 posts, don't use such big words, dont be so polite and dont be so narcisistic in your writing style eg I this, I that, and throw in a bit of slang.

But keep up the good work your very entertaining, love your stuff on all the other forums.

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aus301 said...

For me it's all about the rig, upper body and hand position. These things made the biggest difference to my bottom turns.

I fully agree. The message that comes through from Goya is that you really have to work the boom, plus of course every thing else... It's kind of ironic. First you learn to stear a board by using the rig. Later when you learn to sail smaller boards, you get obsessed with this idea of foot steering and forget about the rig.

In a gybe it's pretty simple - if you know how to do it. You sheet/push/tilt the rig hard on entry which sets the board on it's rail. The sail then goes neutral and only comes into play later when opened up to provide drive.

What's really going on in bottom turns on bigger waves I can really only speculate. But my guess is that you can tighten the turn at any point by sheeting in. But you can't sheet in from a neutral position. So you first have to sheet out momentarily to "catch the wind". To me big waves are unfortunately mostly about videos. But the extent to which the sailors are working the rig really seem to set the experts apart from the rest. If you are not willing and able to work the rig you will more or less follow the line you chose on entry and which will be more or usefull depending on what suprises the wave throws at you.

Sorry for my boring language and lack of slang. I have learnt english from books. Sinbad really has done a lot of damage to forums. If all newcomers are treated this way, the future looks pretty dim.

You can tighten a bottom turn with foot steering quite easily without having to think about flapping the sail in and out

What country are you in Theorist?

Yeah, surely Goya and Kauli are just flapping their sails for the heck of it (is that slang by the way?)! Why not just stick to the topic?

More on topic Mark: It's true that you can footsteer through the turn. For example you can tighten a gybe by pushing your hip into the turn which will result in more pressure trough the feet. But what I speculate is you need some opposing force to be able to shift you bodyweight. During the gybe this will normally be rotating the rig out/back. Similarily you can probably shift some weight into a bottom turn when opening the sail. But what if you need to tighten the turn at a point when the sail has been fully sheeted and is going in "neutral"? A rig with no pull is useless for opposing. So you need to open up a bit to get something to work with.

An example from motorbiking may illustrate my point. "Once in a turn, countersteering is (again) required to make changes to its shape. The only way to decrease the radius at the same speed is to increase the lean angle, and the only way to increase the lean angle, is again to momentarily steer opposite to the direction of the curve. To the untrained, this can be extremely counter-intuitive." (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersteering)

I have allready made clear that I'm only a biginner in the waves. But I know exactly how it feels when you need to tighten the curve and want to pressure the rail with a neutral rig in your hand. It feels as if the board is completely stiff. The more you press on your feet the higher the risk of just diving backwards out the turn.

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Theorist said...

"More on topic Mark: It's true that you can footsteer through the turn. <snip>

An example from motorbiking may illustrate my point. "Once in a turn, countersteering is (again) required to make changes to its shape. The only way to decrease the radius at the same speed is to increase the lean angle, and the only way to increase the lean angle, is again to momentarily steer opposite to the direction of the curve. To the untrained, this can be extremely counter-intuitive." (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countersteering)"


No No No! A bike is totally different as the spinning of the wheels generates the cetrifugal force that keeps the bike upright. Thus, lean angle changes do require some "strange" movement. There is absolutely nothing in common with turning a windsurf board as there is no rotating mass like a wheel on it (at least where I sail)

"I have already made clear that I'm only a biginner in the waves. But I know exactly how it feels when you need to tighten the curve and want to pressure the rail with a neutral rig in your hand. It feels as if the board is completely stiff. The more you press on your feet the higher the risk of just diving backwards out the
turn. "

Then sorry you need to work on your turns more. A surfer can turn without a rig can't he? Doesn't need something to pull against to tighten his bottom turn.


I think you have misread what is going on when you watched cisco's technique... any sheeting in and out is nothing to do with tightening the bottom turn. He sheets in with hand back down the boom and just *turns* but he does tighten the turn toward the end to get more vertical. To do that, you do not need to sheet out and then in again. What a load of bollocks.

I find it somewhat bemusing that you came here with a name "Theorist" and made your first posts about you theory of bottom turning........ then argue with others when they set you straight.... but you do admit to being a beginner in the waves.
You remind me of somebody