Its good that your keen to get into windsurfing but you are using totally the wrong equipment.

The board you have is for more advanced sailors and is classed as a sinker.

Look at the volume on the board, for beginners it should be, your weight in kg, plus the rig weight in kg, and board weight, then allow about 40 plus litres for beginning, this should add up to around 100 litres plus the 40 so a board with around 150 litres is the best.

The sails also big to be starting with, use something around 5.0m.

Get to grips with that gear first then get into something slightly smaller.

For every Litre in Volume it should just support 1kg.

The loopy things on the boom are for when you get more advanced and can use a harness.....

Windsurfing is great but the equipment is holding you back, you'd love it more with the right gear.

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zisconnected said..
Your photo is frightening.Also, what is the point of the rope loops tied to the boom?

They are the key to real windsurfing.
Have a look at the video at the beginning of this thread.
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Gps/Luderitz-Video?page=1#5

Don't let it scare you though this is the extreme end of speed sailing. But it does demonstrate the forces involved. There's no way you can hang on with just your arms for very long.
Those "ropes" are "harness lines". You wear a harness with a hook on it, hook into those lines, and take the force in the sail with all your weight. This allows you to sail well powered up for long periods of time. e.g. the 24hr distance record is over 500kms.
So from the learning steps you are taking now, a whole world of opportunities can open up. There's lots of different windsurfing disciplines, both competitive and recreational, from wave sailing, freestyle, various racing divisions and speed.

I've been keeping my eye on used boards and sails and found this. Is this a good deal and better than my current setup? I feel as if I get this I'd be trading up. The guy said he's 83kg and I'm 74. This place is 2.5 hours away so I don't want to drive there for something that's not worth it. Thanks!

The boards are hifly Mambo, and they are 9ft long and a volume of 175L

The larger sail is a hifly x-ride 4.7, and the smaller one is a hifly junior pro 3.5

www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/377013659907731/

That will be much better for learning on that what you have. Much more suited for learning on and light conditions.
I think you'll have fun on it, but you may grow out of it if you get in cleaner stronger winds.
The sails are small, the 3.5 will get you sailing in anything, but you can learn bad habits with a small sail, you can easily overpower, you don't learn good handling skills, then you have to unlearn your bad habits when you want to move to a bigger sail to go faster.

You should realise that old gear (unless it's museum quality and you want to preserve it for posterity...) is a *blessing* and not a curse. You've been blessed.

Old gear gets you on the water. From your posts in this thread, it sounds like you've already had fun and enjoyed time on your board. Everyone blasting about on cambered sails, rocketing off waves or landing one-handed-no-footed-spock-into-cheese-roll-360s or whatever might claim that they've forgotten the joys of learning -- the uphauling, the spending-all-day-getting-back sessions, the skin damage, the spectacular crashes, etc.. -- but, let's be honest, we've all been there and we've all done that and we ALL probably enjoyed it, at the time.

Windsurfing is about learning. It isn't about being good, it's about being better. There's always something to learn and, frankly, windsurfing has a pretty smooth learning curve -- albeit a rather steep one. On that aspect, it doesn't matter whether you're uphauling or whatever level you're at, you've already arrived.

Enough soppy philosophising... on to practical (actually useful) stuff...

One of the best things about old gear is this: take the fin off and learn to water-start on the grass (or beach, if you've got a sandy one.) Do what decrepit said, starting sitting on the ground, next to your board. It's harder in the water, of course, but practice on the hard is none the less helpful.

Next is a tip for uphauling.... which might be hard to explain so please bear with me... let me start with a litany of the things one learns through trial and error and then I'll get to the point...

Look at your very first picture of you uphauling. You're doing it the way everyone does, at first: the mast is on the surface of the water with the clew of the sail lying to the left of it from the sailor's (your) perspective and you're hauling it directly towards your body. This works, but you'll notice a few things. Firstly, with a short rope (as mentioned by others) you can't really engage your back to do the hauling. With a longer rope, you'll soon learn to get your weight against the rope at which point the water on top of the sail will start run off over the leech and foot of the sail -- the trailing and lower edges, respectively. You'll learn that, at this point, it saves energy to just crouch and wait with a constant pressure on the up-haul line -- all the effort in the world won't lift the sail until that water has run off and the extra effort doesn't speed up that process very much -- not worth the energy. The "intermediate" up-hauling technique becomes this: grab line, engage back, get "just enough" weight against the rope, wait for water to run off, THEN (and only then) lift the rig.

So skip all that and get directly to "advanced" up-hauling technique: don't pull the mast directly towards you but rather try to pull it at a bit of an angle, pulling the mast away from the clew, so that the sail slips out of the water. The water wants to run off over the leech so pulling the mast away from the trailing edge greatly accelerates this process. Also, it clears the belly of the sail fast and so, even if your balance on the board doesn't allow you to completely clear the sail this way, when you DO then pull the mast directly up, the front body of the sail will lift out of the water first and the whole process will feel much lighter.

I'm no instructor so I hope that my description is not completely unintelligible. I'm sorry if it isn't very helpful but perhaps it saves you some anguish, perhaps not.

Remember this: energy saved getting under way is energy to spend learning new things. Learning makes windsurfing fun.

Go have fun.

Just a few more thoughts...

1. A 175 litre board is fantastic for learning the basics. And, then, for keeping around to teach all your friends, even once you've moved on. And for learning light-wind sail core skills (some call them "tricks". There are no "tricks", just skills you haven't learned, yet). And for SUP. And ... whatever. Everyone should have a big-ol'-board for floaty sessions when there's no proper planing conditions. (Yeah. European inland waters are my home.)

2. D.I.Y. up-haul lines are the best. Make one with nice thick, soft rope, big comfortable grippy knots, champagne corks or foam tube sections or whatever you need to prolong your time on the water -- go wild. Just use some bungie cord on the lower third or so so that it will spring back against the mast when you let go of it instead of flapping about annoyingly. (Getting a loose, floppy up-haul caught on your harness hook while gybing is no fun. I've done it and lost my hat in the resulting crash. Any plan where you lose your hat is a bad plan!)

3. If you're going to be wearing a harness (and you will be, soon...) make an easy-up-haul with a bit of plastic tube and some intuition. (Search the web and reverse-engineer what you find.) (You'll need, at minimum, a length of static line, a length of bungie cord and a short piece of plastic tube. All of which could be bought for a few bucks. Innovation, beyond that, is limitless. Again, go wild.)

4. Harnesses are pretty much mandatory for proper technique because, without one, you cannot REALLY get your weight and power into the mast foot. (Oh, another pithy tip that's surprisingly important: remember that, on a windsurfer, you have THREE feet.) Ideally, you want to be light on your own human feet and ride mostly on the harness. (Although I disagree with decrepit on one count. When you're properly powered up and flying, the rig becomes eerily light in your hands and surprisingly easy to handle even if you unhook from the harness. It's when you're accelerating that it's truly impossible to hold. Of course, I've never done any speed record sailing so I don't know if this still holds when you exceed ordinary mortal velocities. We could still both be right.)