Hi,

for a while now I've been trying to lay down the sail in a turn (eg. during laydown jibe or bottom turn).
From watching videos and reading books I know what to do in theory, but it doesn't work out on the water...

Here is what I do:

1. Pick up some speed, oversheet slightly
2. Weight is on front foot, back foot near opposite rail, feet shoulder width apart
3. Move back hand back along the boom
4. Extend front arm forward and downward
5. Bend knees and roll on to toes to weigh opposite rail

Step 1-3 are no problem, but at step 4 (extend the mast arm forward) one of the following happens:

a) the board starts to turn, but I lose allmost all speed before I can move the mast hand down
b) there is too much pressure in the sail to be able to put the mast hand down
c) the board turns but I'm not really carving

What am I doing wrong ?

And how do I approach learning this ?

Hi Garage sale,

Things always seem different out on the water than when we think them out in our head. I can do a partial lay down gibe on the water but there always seems to be too much power in the sail to lay it down completely. I really think it is a speed issue. Not going fast enough into the gibe itself. I can do a perfect lay down gibe on my windskate board because there is less drag and easier to maintain speed on land. Think about when you go into your gibe, try thinking about going close to the speed of the actual wind blowing then it should be more effortless. Let me know what you think about that.

Here's a sequence of a lay down I took a few years back.
As you can see, Jase initiates the lay down quite broad off the wind. The wind is almost on his right shoulder.
He's carrying plenty of speed through the gybe and only lays it down once the sail is depowered off the wind.

Could be a couple of things to work on...

Trying to lay the sail down to early will make it hard to drop the front arm as there is still too much power from the apparent wind in the sail

Try to time the lay down part as you bear away and feel the sail loose power. This should address point (b) above.

You want to be going pretty quick to keep speed and initiate the move. Points A and C sounds to me like you are still using too much back foot pressure and or not bending the knees enough and standing too tall.

keys points to remember

Speed
weight forward
bend knees
eyes up

practice laydown 360's as they will help develop the basics.

If you are having trouble carving/keeping forward try adjusting your straps a bit looser and in the front holes.

good luck

For me I think its only something I do when I know I can get loads of speed, flat water and on a sail under 6m. The carve is very drawn out so that gives plenty time to get it down and back up. Leaning forward plus rig forward is important, I always thought Bjorn had the best looking laydowns, though in some of these clips he pulls the rig back. I have a vid somewhere, might be a NP one where it looks perfect!

I remember the vid is called "Rig it Right" not sure if it is on the web somewhere? Took a screenshot at our fun flatwater location, though if I didn't have the Gopro, I'd have kept looking forwards as I think looking where you want to go is important.

Thanks guys, some good tips there. I will try the following:

- Bear off before initiating the move and do wider turn to maintain speed
- bend knees more and use the pull from the sail to get the pressure on the opposite rail
- Lay down sail when it starts to lose power
- look at the mast top when sail is down

fingers crossed that it will work!

P.S it looks so easy when Bjoern does it ... lol not sure about the song "champagne showers" ;)

I see your in SA, come up to Wallaroo one day and i'll show you how, I lay it down in most jibes

Try to get the leeward shin to touch the sail. Its also kind of banking the board hard so you have to lean in to the turn. If you try to do those two things, the sail will lay down automatically. When you are fully powered the sail might end up flat against the water. If you are just powered or not going fast, then you cant lean into the turn much so you might ony get the sail down to 45 degrees. Initiate the whole thing as a foot steering bear away. Unhook and hang low to keep power. Then all your other points plus touch the sail eith your shin.

Select to expand quote

GarageSale said..
Thanks guys, some good tips there. I will try the following:

- Bear off before initiating the move and do wider turn to maintain speed
- bend knees more and use the pull from the sail to get the pressure on the opposite rail
- Lay down sail when it starts to lose power
- look at the mast top when sail is down

fingers crossed that it will work!

P.S it looks so easy when Bjoern does it ... lol not sure about the song "champagne showers" ;)

Not sure looking at mast top is good or not during the early stages? I suspect it distracts and could lead to not focusing on the whole movement which should be fluid. Just my thoughts.

Ok so after further trial and error it seems to be a timing thing. I tried to do everything at the same time, but it seems to be more of a sequence:

Phase 1: Initiating the turn by sheeting in, sail hand back and shifting the rig towards the nose of the board. There is a lot of power in the sail, so I keep the mast arm slightly bent and body tension to stay in control. I have slightly more weight on the front foot and I'm not applying any heel pressure on the board anymore. I'm not laying down the sail yet.

Phase 2: As the turn continues, I use the pull of the sail to gradually lean into the turn, shifting my weight onto my toes and bending my knees. As the board continues to turn, the power in the sail decreases and I'm able to extend the mast arm further forward and down.

Phase 3: When I'm almost downwind, the sail is easy to lower and I twist my upper body into the turn and move the clew of the sail towards the back of the board so that the sail touches my shin.

There seems to be a delay between the phases and there is a gradual transition between them. The difficulty is blending the phases together smoothly... I usually only get 1 or 2 of them right. I had a couple of attempts where I got all 3, more by accident than anything.

It seems easier going down a wave than against a wave, due to the additional speed.

Things that aren't working yet:
- losing too much speed during the manouver
- not engaging the rail enough
- weight distribution
- timing

Can someone please confirm the "delay" between the phases ? I'll keep trying.

Marc

I think there is a bit of a difference between wave sailing and flat water slalom. I am not much of a wave sailer so maybe ask the same question over in waves but here is my two cents worth. When you are wave sailing, its more like surfing. If the waves are powerfull and the wind blowing cross off, then when you are wave riding, you dont need to use much sail power, and this is when you see the wave guys laying the sail down on bottom turns.this isnt really a lay down gybe. A lay down slalom gybe is a different beast. Deffinitely easier in flat water, so practice on the inside gybes first.outside gybes, yes you want to time it onto a wave but slso quite often you have to slow down just to make it through the bumps. Not many guys pull off outside laydown gybes in rough water. Have a look at some pwa slalom races, in rough water the sails arent going very flat to the water.

As others have said Garage Sail/Sale , you need to bear away first.

I remember having trouble with these years ago, watching all the other local guys doing lay downs. One of the guys told me I was trying to lay down the sail too early. I think my reason for that had been to try and lay it down as soon as possible to allow for enough time to bring it back up again and master the gybe.

As soon as I started bearing off deep before laying the sail down I found it a lot easier. I find max speed, then bear off really deep, then lay down the sail by swinging the boom down like I'm going to chop my ankles off with the clew seems to work for me.

I reckon the sweet spot to lay down the sail is after you've bared away and the sail has depowered a fair bit but you still have plenty of board speed; that point where you're travelling on momentum rather than speed from the sail.

Crank it down hard, then rip it back up again and let go of your back arm as it's coming back up as you're now late into the gybe and want the sail to start rotating rather than you getting caught on the wrong side and slammed backwards into the water.

Old thread...
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/General/Laydown-Gybes/