The Dry Duck Jibe

[johnl]

Hey guys, thanks for all the tips. I bet I'm looking at the rig and not where I want to go. I didn't get a chance to try today (7.5 sail would be interesting to learn the duck on).

Thanks for all the suggestions.


Mark, NO WAY was I on a superfreak! Northwave all the way .... I was on the blue northwave with the black dacron leach. I was practicing the ducks on the outside, and regular jibes near the beach.... I did see some other guys trying duck jibes also, it was probably one of them....

[markpaine]

[jse]

Random thoughts:

1. Definitely look at th horizon, not your sail
2. As you start your turn, sheet in hard to accelerate, like a quick pump.
3. After you retrieve the sail, apply mast base pressure to keep the board level, i.e., push down on the booms.
4. As an exercise in ducking early, try this: Duck your sail into a clew first position, still planing. To do that you bear off just a tad, duck the sail, and stop the turn. Flip again and you've done a sail 360.

Now, can someone tell me how to gybe, I seem to have forgotten.

Steve

[keycocker]

Did anyone make clear that this is a symptom of concentrating on the sail flip and not remembering to keep the carve in harder and harder just like any jibe?
My duck instructor kept reminding me that if I do the footwork correctly the sail just follows. This tip works for any carving jibe. On normal jibes he made me let go of the sail completely and do a fast carve with my hands at my sides. Half the time the sail would be right there in front of me at the end and I could just grab it, seemingly out of thin air.

[hildebra]

How about double ducks? Is it essentially a sail 360 with a duck after? Or is the idea to totally kill apparent wind then spin the sail on its axis? I have tried them many times and invariably scrub all speed and/or end up dead down wind and/or halfway thru the second sail flip etc. I am a very capable and comfortable ducker and can usually plane out of sail 360s, but would love a few tips on this variation.

Thx
jim

[tkalkows]

I learned this last season and it was much easier that I thought. Not sure if anyone mentioned this before but what helped me a lot was to memorize the moves on the beach couple of times. And of course I was flipping the sail to late even though everyone was telling me to do this earlier. Than I did it once correctly and .... what a difference. In fact I can say that duck jibe seems to be easier than the regular step jibe to carve consistently.

[johnl]

Well I finally got another chance to play with them (at Candlestick today). It is definately me looking at the sail. When I look to the inside of the turn, then I tend to stay dry, if I forget and watch the sail, then I loose my carve.

Now I just need to work on faster hands and pulling the clew back more. When I do a sloppy sail change, I tend to look at the sail.

But the good news is that I managed to stay dry on about 6 - 8 jibes, and came very close to planing out of one.

More practice........

[ctuna]

All these moves have to be like Karate moves you have to do them automatically. Practice the sail movements on dry land do not look at what you are doing look ahead, feel what you are doing, keep you body fairly upright, especially above the waist. If you have a big board practice sail spins to clew first with a small sail in light winds. The big problem for me was letting the boom hit the water and getting launched, and also looking at the sail . If you do not let the boom hit the water you won't get launched and you will find you can do the sail spin earlier and earlier.

[DonORiordan]

ctuna and tkalkows are correct. Practice on dry land until the sail handling becomes completely automatic. Then on the water you can just focus on keeping your carve right.

Here is how you do it. Take a simulator (or a board with the fin removed), and point it on a very, very board reach i.e. just 30 degrees short of dead downwind.

Attach a boom to (bottom half of) a mast, and attach the combo to the board. You now have whats known as a windless simulator.

Practice the steps below with the windless simulator until they are fully automatic. As in, do them a few hundred times (or at least what feels like a few hundred times). Then, rig a small sail (4.x?), and on a very light wind day (e.g. 5mph) repeat the operations with your simulator o. Again, do them a few hundred times. Actually, probably 50 will be enough. Try with either a little more wind, or a little bigger sail (though not usually both at the same time). 2 hours of practice doing this will be far more beneficial than 2 months trying it on the water.

I taught my wife how to DJ with this "dry land practice" technique. After doing this (yeah, I had to force/cajole her) on land, The first time she tried them on the water, she made a dry DJ after only 3-5 attempts, as soon as she got her board carve and timing figured out (like you, her initial attempts were ducking the sail far too late). And after her first dry one, she then made a couple more the same day. All thanks to a couple of hours dry land investment. Pretty soon, she was planing out of them (something I still haven't seen her do yet with a step jibe)

If a girl can learn to DJ in one day, so can you or anyone else.

Here is what to practice.

Stand on the board, simulating sailing along on the given reach heading deep downwind. Now, this next bit is important. Slide your clew hand back further towards the clew. Let go of your mast hand, and reach it across your clew hand to grab your boom fairly close to the clew. The closer, the better. Now let go with your original clew hand, and let the mast swing downwind and i.e. across the nose of the board. Of course, with the windless simulator, there is no wind in your "sail" to make this happen naturally, so you have to let gravity do the work instead. Just take your time and let that mast swing downwind. Once its there, pull back on your new clew hand, pulling the clew aggressively right past your ear, and exposing the new boom to where you can grab it in front of the harness lines without having to move your upper body at all. Work on being able to do that all in one continuous motion.

Study the sail motion at http://www.continentseven.com/windsurfmove29.html
(move the slider back & forth manually with your mouse pointer to advance/rewind time at your own pace). Get that image in your head. Watch how that mast heads dead downwind, swinging across the nose, as soon as the mast hand releases the sail (starts at about 40% thru the video time axis). Other than a minor lift of the head to avoid taking the foot of the sail in the face, the sailors upper body barely moves at all when recovering the new boom so the carve doesn't get interrupted. By the time the video reaches the 50% time axis value (i.e. half way), the entire thing is done and the sailor is already sheeting in and sailing out on the new tack, with only the foot switch to worry about. One thing at a time, thats why the DJ is so easy to learn (compared to the step jibe).

So get that image in your head, and then get it in your *muscle memory * by doing a few hundred reps on land. You can do that when its not yet windy enuf to sail. Then try a few in the water, and remember to start the entire sail duck way sooner than your instinct initially tells you (i.e. almost as soon as you start bearing off). Unlike the on-land simulation case (where you point your simulator nose almost all the way downwind to say 150 degrees off the wind, when you are on the water you need to start ducking the sail at 120 degrees off the wind. Thats 30 degrees worth of broad reach only. If you duck it too early, you can recover and carve hard out of it. If you duck it too late...its all over, theres no recovery from that.

Once you get that muscle memory going with the sail duck, you won't have to ever look at your sail again....and can focus on keeping your carve going. One thing at a time to focus on.