Recently bought a new board and fin. From a 100l to 80l naish wave board. Don't know how small the fin is, guessing around 20cm, but I had a 5.7 up and would only spinout when really pushing on the tail. My question is regarding the recovery, what's the fastest way to regain grip. I know sailing downwind helps but I found I would loose a lot of ground and am not sure whether that's the hard reality or if there's a golden rule to recovery.

in an 80L a 20cm fin is for very top end of it's range. You will do much better with a 23cm ish on 5.7

Anyway, yes downwind is about it.
A scissoring kinda action to push front foot downwind and back foot up under your bum works well as it is essentially the reverse of what probably caused the spinout.

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alec95 said...
[br]Recently bought a new board and fin. From a 100l to 80l naish wave board. Don't know how small the fin is, guessing around 20cm, but I had a 5.7 up and would only spinout when really pushing on the tail. My question is regarding the recovery, what's the fastest way to regain grip. I know sailing downwind helps but I found I would loose a lot of ground and am not sure whether that's the hard reality or if there's a golden rule to recovery.

Turning downwind never helped me, when using my skate 100l/21 fin turning downwind at slower speed usually is the cause of spinout because I am riding the board too flat for my current speed.
My tip is to weight your front foot and engage the windward rail trying to transmit your weight through the mast foot. When it comes good remind yourself of the need to sail faster or get a bigger fin. If its your light wind setup put your boom up higher will help too.

If your quick the scissor action that mark_australia mentions works well, but if you have lost it completely, it won't come back until you are able to get the board's rails doing more of the work, or at least that why I have found.

Spin outs are caused by the loss of laminar flow of water around the windward side of the fin. This occurs when you put too much lateral pressure on the fin.

You can avoid the spinout by either using a larger more efficient fin or sailing with a better technique.

To correct spin out you have to reconnect this laminar flow. You can do this by a number of ways;
- slow down sufficiently (usually by heading into the wind) for the laminar flow to re-establish
- head down wind with the sissor action as Mark suggests, this unloads the lateral pressure on the fin
- chop jump and land with no lateral pressure on your fin

Unfortunately there is no easy solution. The best strategy is to avoid the spinout in the first place.

I've always just yanked the tail of the board towards me to great success.

-Kevin

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KevinD002 said..

I've always just yanked the tail of the board towards me to great success.

-Kevin

I find that works but as I get older it's harder to do..

Cheers for the responses.

John, you mentioned better technique. Could someone elaborate?

Mast foot pressure.

You need to get more by either committing to your harness or some other way of loading the boom.

Coincidentally this is what you do when you pull the tail back under you. It's a hang on harness lift tail and pull thing.

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alec95 said..

Cheers for the responses.

John, you mentioned better technique. Could someone elaborate?

Its all about lateral pressure on the fin. This comes from your back foot. If you raise your boom and hang vertically off your boom in your harness, then this allows you to adjust the lateral pressure on your fin by:
- bending your knees as your board travels over the chop
- tucking your back foot underneath when you land your board after jumps (small or big) over chop or waves
- not pushing too hard laterally with your back foot when working to windward
After a while you start to get a sixth sense as to how much lateral pressure you can put on your back foot.

If you have to work too hard, then its a good sign you need to use a bigger more efficient fin.

it sounds like you are spinning out while trying to maintain an upwind position.

this can be caused by a few things.

1. not weighting the front leg enough. jumping from slalom gear which is all back foot orientated to wave gear requires a change of technique.
2. not standing up straight enough. wave gear has a more inboard/upright stance
3. crap fin
4. not enough wind for the fin
5. not enough outhaul

can't think of anything else.

Makes a lot more sense now cheers. I think it has been a combination of a lack of wind and not sailing up right enough. Either way next time I go out ill try a few things. Thanks again for your advice.

Move harness lines back - that should help. Also, a simple chop-hop & tuck your back foot at the same time will correct it, but sometimes you are too far over to get back upright, that's where pointing downwind for a sec works.

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RAL INN said..

Mast foot pressure.

You need to get more by either committing to your harness or some other way of loading the boom.

Coincidentally this is what you do when you pull the tail back under you. It's a hang on harness lift tail and pull thing.

If you stamp your foot behind the mast foot the fin reengages. I guess it works because it unweights your back foot and gets your weight forward and over the board. It works but I don't do it because I find that if I just hang on the booms and pull the tail under me that does the trick and I stay in the straps.

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Sailhack said..

Move harness lines back - that should help. Also, a simple chop-hop & tuck your back foot at the same time will correct it, but sometimes you are too far over to get back upright, that's where pointing downwind for a sec works.

chop hop is the trick, get the fin out of the water, as it drops back in it re-engages

of course, if you're way out of control, you'll need to dig the windward rail in