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remery said..
Sort of highlights that, like a golf swing, there is basically only one way.

Oooooh, you're going to be in trouble for saying that Rob!

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sarwind said..
Hi all,
For those of you who have mastered the Planing Gybe, how did you learn it? what was your progression like ?
Did you practice mostly with a big board ? and for how long?
Did you practice at a location with flat water or any condition of the day?

I am not a natural sportsman, so it took me a long time, but it can be done. We all have to gybe if we want to turn around and sail back to the beach, so each one is a chance to practise no matter what board, sail, or wind. I've listed the big points that helped me below. Flipping the rig early is the most important. It happens earlier than you feel it should and should be done when the nose points straight downwind:

Use the Step Gybe the best form of gybe
Back arm back before you turn
Flip earlier than you think is prudent (ie. when you are pointing straight downwind)
Foot change simultaneous with the rig flip
Ignore the sea state Some gybes will fail because of this but watching the chop is worse. Mostly, your board will cut through. Trust it.
Try to pull down on your boom with your front hand throughout. You won't be able to exert much force but it will help keep you in a better position and keep the nose down.
Knees bent, but be strong (not stiff) in your ankles. You are in control of the board - it doesn't control you.
Do not look down Look up, look through the sail, look anywhere but down. The body always follows the eyes - right into the drink.
Expect to fail often It's ok - everyone has to go through it.

Buddhist teaching:
"I used to be terrible at gybes. Then I did 10,000 gybes. I'm not terrible anymore."

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Shifu said..

sarwind said..
Hi all,
For those of you who have mastered the Planing Gybe, how did you learn it? what was your progression like ?
Did you practice mostly with a big board ? and for how long?
Did you practice at a location with flat water or any condition of the day?

I am not a natural sportsman, so it took me a long time, but it can be done. We all have to gybe if we want to turn around and sail back to the beach, so each one is a chance to practise no matter what board, sail, or wind. I've listed the big points that helped me below. Flipping the rig early is the most important. It happens earlier than you feel it should and should be done when the nose points straight downwind:

Use the Step Gybe the best form of gybe
Back arm back before you turn
Flip earlier than you think is prudent (ie. when you are pointing straight downwind)
Foot change simultaneous with the rig flip
Ignore the sea state Some gybes will fail because of this but watching the chop is worse. Mostly, your board will cut through. Trust it.
Try to pull down on your boom with your front hand throughout. You won't be able to exert much force but it will help keep you in a better position and keep the nose down.
Knees bent, but be strong (not stiff) in your ankles. You are in control of the board - it doesn't control you.
Do not look down Look up, look through the sail, look anywhere but down. The body always follows the eyes - right into the drink.
Expect to fail often It's ok - everyone has to go through it.

Buddhist teaching:
"I used to be terrible at gybes. Then I did 10,000 gybes. I'm not terrible anymore."

"I used to be terrible at gybes. Then I did 10,000 gybes. I'm not terrible anymore."
Cripes at 6 gybes a sail off Coal point I'll be dead before I learn..

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sboardcrazy said..

"I used to be terrible at gybes. Then I did 10,000 gybes. I'm not terrible anymore."
Cripes at 6 gybes a sail off Coal point I'll be dead before I learn..

I once attempted a GPS hour in a small bay, I did 56 gybes and missed one. The hour was terrible!

Lesson from above, shorten your run to improve gybing!

My best suggestion would be to find a windy place with shallow water and practice.

I found my GPS image from years ago when I did a couple of gybes one day.

Not as smooth as yours


Some one will be along with a 300km day soon...

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FormulaNova said..
My best suggestion would be to find a windy place with shallow water and practice.

I found my GPS image from years ago when I did a couple of gybes one day.

Thems were the days.


The tern island point was low, the wind was clean and so was the water. Such a great place to learn/practice gybing.


there were even crabs on the inner bank to give you a nip and get you going again, if you started to get too slack and start chatting to someone.

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Shifu said.. Some one will be along with a 300km day soon...

Very true, here it is. LG 328km.

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decrepit said..
Very true, here it is. LG 328km.

You were such a youngster back then .. only 69?

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boardsurfr said.. You were such a youngster back then .. only 69?

Your maths are correct.

Lots of good advice above, but like a golf swing, you can't remember all the things you need to do as you do them. So I concentrate on some key moves.
- Move front hand forward to the mast and back hand backwards along the boom prior to the gybe
- Un hook, step across board with your back foot, pull in your back (sheet) hand and look at the clew of your sail as you commence your turn
- Flip sail and switch feet just before the apex of the turn
- Steer with you back foot to remain on a broad reach after you pass the apex of the turn to maintain speed and stay on the plane
- hook in and step back into footstraps

Flat water is easier, speed is your friend so look for a gust to gybe in

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decrepit said..

boardsurfr said.. You were such a youngster back then .. only 69?

Your maths are correct.

Always fun when you get your ass kicked by a decrepit guy. I felt really old this year at LG when I could not get past 250 km due to cramps. But on the bright side, it gives me a reason to go back to try again. This time, I'll bring vitamin E to test if it will really help me against cramps. Nina just hasto come back to get her 40, so it's just a question of time. Hopefully a few years before I turn 69!

Inspired by this thread I was eager to practice more of the entry portions and rigged an 8.0 today, but ended up switching to 9.5 when it was a bit underpowered.

Something I tried which I hadn't before, but was in Sam Ross jibe videos, was looking over the shoulder back at the clew as the carve went in. It made it way easier to judge the carve radius just by spotting the wake on a fin. Isn't quite like that on foil.

Another thing was I tried to sense when I was getting the board to bog down and realizing where my flip timing was. Now, I figure I was late and I think I could tell that I needed more weight forward. It wasn't great conditions being on a 9.5 but those two things that I practiced on gave me a little more insight into my fin jibes. I think with looking back at the clew I can judge the flip at a better time more consistently. Will need better wind to experiment more.

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aeroegnr said..
Something I tried which I hadn't before, but was in Sam Ross jibe videos, was looking over the shoulder back at the clew as the carve went in. It made it way easier to judge the carve radius just by spotting the wake on a fin. Isn't quite like that on foil.

Funny you should say that - but I assume you're talking about not seeing a wake. Looking where you want to go is generally the right thing to do. I've been struggling with the wing jibe for a while. Finally got a chance to hear Andy Brandt's lesson, and looking back where you came from (and want to go) is one of the things I missed. I knew that looking for the handles was a bad idea, but it's much easier to follow "do this!" instructions than "don't do this!".

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boardsurfr said..

aeroegnr said..
Something I tried which I hadn't before, but was in Sam Ross jibe videos, was looking over the shoulder back at the clew as the carve went in. It made it way easier to judge the carve radius just by spotting the wake on a fin. Isn't quite like that on foil.

Funny you should say that - but I assume you're talking about not seeing a wake. Looking where you want to go is generally the right thing to do. I've been struggling with the wing jibe for a while. Finally got a chance to hear Andy Brandt's lesson, and looking back where you came from (and want to go) is one of the things I missed. I knew that looking for the handles was a bad idea, but it's much easier to follow "do this!" instructions than "don't do this!".

Yeah there's no wake to fixate on with a foil. However, I may also try the same focus-on-the-clew technique because it forces the head rotation early as well as stops the staring-forward-at-the-mast fascination that Brandt busted me on too.

My suggestion to foilers - should work for fins, too - is to look through the sail (somewhere from the back hand back) as you begin the jibe to spot your exit point. As the sail sweeps across the front of the board, keep looking at it. Really helps with keeping from turning too far upwind. It keeps the turn more of a 90-120 degree affair by default (any more of a turn would require you to look behind you).

Would also like to say that while not the focus of the thread, reading it has helped me suss some issues with very light wind jibes on a race foil especially the "flip earlier" bit. In light wind on a foil, everything happens very fast (we turn more sharply to conserve energy) and it's easy to wait a moment too long. Thanks to all who've offered advice.

I decided to try to look at the clew at entry on freeride foil gear. Was pretty powered up on a 5.6 and it surprised me how stable it seemed to make things.

I think it works because it gives you an early focal target that is closer to where you are going to go vs a less specific spot in your current direction.

I'll definitely try it again

My dad an, old motorcyclist, used to say, "Look where you're going because you go where you're looking".

Trying to put some pieces of the puzzle together, I am probably stepping/flipping way too late on my fin jibes.

It was definitely the case with my foiling jibes. All I changed my last session was stepping way earlier than I thought I could. It stabilized the board to be on the new side while heading almost dead downwind before the flip. I actually nailed several without touching the water at all, and probably 5x more with little taps just after the flip before coming back to the reach. I had never flown all the way through the jibe before that, and they were consistent enough to keep up on a few reaches with the better foil jibers here (I would always lose them in the jibes because of extended touch downs even if I stayed above the board slogging speed).

Will try a much earlier step next time I'm on a fin. It's definitely "noisier" on signals and bouncing around on the chop but now that I have the perception of the angle to the wind vs. apparent down a bit better, hopefully I will have better timing.

One of the most common jibe mistakes on the fin is "carve fascination". It's such a cool feeling to carve into the jibe at full speed that we are reluctant to move on to stepping & flipping, and therefore do it too late. I still do this all the time. But the more board speed you have while without power, the more stability you have, and the faster you exit the turn. The foil makes that a bit more obvious.
BTW, you had asked about polar plots for watch data without doppler headings. The newest version of GPS Speedreader can do that.

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boardsurfr said..
One of the most common jibe mistakes on the fin is "carve fascination". It's such a cool feeling to carve into the jibe at full speed that we are reluctant to move on to stepping & flipping, and therefore do it too late. I still do this all the time. But the more board speed you have while without power, the more stability you have, and the faster you exit the turn. The foil makes that a bit more obvious.
BTW, you had asked about polar plots for watch data without doppler headings. The newest version of GPS Speedreader can do that.

Excellent!
Thank you, finally can view my own polars! That may help sort out some speed/other issues.

You wanna learn how to gybe good, go racing. Nothing improves your skills like having to gybe in a crowd of people at a gybe mark for fear of getting run over..

To turn a gybe into a planing gybe you need to keep speed up.
1. Bear off, go as fast as you can.
2. Look into turn and turn sharp so less time losing speed.
3. Press down with front hand to keep board level before and after rig flip.

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patronus said..
To turn a gybe into a planing gybe you need to keep speed up.
1. Bear off, go as fast as you can.
2. Look into turn and turn sharp so less time losing speed.
3. Press down with front hand to keep board level before and after rig flip.

I disagree with "turn sharp". What is important is to turn consistently. When working on planing through jibes, it is pretty common to wobble near dead downwind, going straight or even turning back. Here is an example - one of the best jibes I've seen in GPS tracks (slowboat in Albany):


Minimum speed is above 20 knots. This is 1 Hz data which tends to give higher minimum speeds than 5 or 10 Hz data, so here is another great turn (Woody, same spot):


15.7 knot minimum, which is better than anything I ever got in tens of thousands of jibes in my GPS tracks. Note that both jibes are pretty wide, especially the 20 knot jibe from Chris.

The only really great narrow jibes I recall seeing in GPS tracks are from winging, where keeping 80% of the entry speed in jibes with a 20-25 m diameter is quite easy, at least for very good wingers. But the tracks I am talking about had a much lower entry speed than the speedsurfing tracks above.

I tried to test my theory on an earlier step on my big Kode and an 8.0. Think I could have used more wind, but I did successfully step a bit earlier and stay on plane a bit longer that way IF I kept my weight forward. I still sank the tail a bit on some steps due to being clumsy, and biffed a few carves on that side and went more or less straight downwind. But, I think if I was in a bit flatter spot with a smidge more wind I could have kept it going.

I felt the difference but it's definitely more difficult for me than on foil. I just know that easy flip on the last half of the carve is there, just waiting for me.

Sometimes there is so little apparent wind mid-gybe that the sail won't flip easily by itself. Give it a push with your back hand to speed things up.

As a beginner- thanks for the tips. The "don't look down" was an instant 30% improvement on the success rate. Now for the remaining 40%...

I remember when foils first hit the scene and everyone said they'd be impossible to gybe. I've found just the opposite, I was gybing a windfoil then a wingfoil far more consistently then I've managed with a fin.

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Grantmac said..
I remember when foils first hit the scene and everyone said they'd be impossible to gybe. I've found just the opposite, I was gybing a windfoil then a wingfoil far more consistently than I've managed with a fin.

With a fin and on a slightly larger board that most people working on planing jibes are likely to use, you can get away with murder, and either fall much later or jibe dry but slow. When teaching people how to plane through fin jibes, it is very common that their mistakes are much earlier in the jibe than they think.

The foil jibes are much better at giving immediate feedback. Step wrong, and you'll crash or touch down very soon. That makes it easier to self-diagnose and fix mistakes before they become automated. Those who struggle most are sometimes windsurfers who have a hard time unlearning old habits that work on the fin, but not on the foil. One example is how to switch feet when winging. If you watch good fibers and experts, you'll (almost) always see that the back foot steps forward first, and then the front foot steps back. But ABK teaches stepping back with the front foot halfway first, simple because most people Andy teaches are former windsurfers, who have that automated. It took me at least 30 sessions before I could unlearn the "front foot first" habit, and step forward with the back foot instead, after doing this in thousands of fin sessions over decades.