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techno900
Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4164
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 Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 8:30 am Post subject: |
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The "tug-a-war" analogy has one flaw. If you are in a tug-a-war and you are getting pulled over, you move you feet forward to maintain your balance. If you are in straps and a tug-a-war, and can't move your front foot, you will get pulled over.
While the front strap does offer some stability and resistance from the sail force, without the experience/skill, you will get tossed from time to time.
There are many subtleties to windsurfing. On any board, when trying to get on plane, a downward force on the boom = weight on the mast foot, will help keep the board flat and will promote planing. This has been mentioned before, but I believe it's easier to get the downward force on the boom (hanging in the harness) while in the straps than when not in the straps, even if it's only the front strap.
As your weight moves back to the straps, you have to compensate with a weight transfer to the boom via the harness. If not, the tail sinks and you stall or head up. This can be an issue if NOT hooked in when getting into the straps.
No simple answer, it takes practice and more practice pushing past your comfort zone little by little. |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 8:49 am Post subject: |
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| techno900 wrote: | | The "tug-a-war" analogy has one flaw. If you are in a tug-a-war and you are getting pulled over, you move you feet forward to maintain your balance. If you are in straps and a tug-a-war, and can't move your front foot, you will get pulled over. |
Unless your back foot has even a LIITLE BIT of vertical anchor. If it does, your front knee will simply collapse when its quads are overwhelmed.
I learned to sail, and sailed for the next 35 years, in gusty, rough $#!+, often beyond the point at which the other recreational (i.e., sub-pro skill level) sailors are blown off the water. Unless one is so gifted and/or sails so timidly that he never goes over the bars, I am 100% convinced by the physics and by those 35 years that a slightly wider (OK, longer) stance is more versatile than a narrow one in gusty winds. And as we've beaten to death in other threads, a catapult with only the front foot in its strap invites crippling injuries completely preventable by a strapped-in back foot, even if that strap is very loose. |
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Darbonne
Joined: 27 Jan 2012
Posts: 252
Location: Farmerville, Louisiana
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 8:59 am Post subject: |
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No simple answer, it takes practice and more practice pushing past your comfort zone little by little.
Yep, no glass ceiling. Just like learning to play music. The more you improve, the more it becomes about subtlety and details.
Practicing works!
Now if I could just figure out how to do a quote on this board. |
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techno900
Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4164
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 10:29 am Post subject: |
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iso said: | Quote: | | Unless your back foot has even a LIITLE BIT of vertical anchor. If it does, your front knee will simply collapse when its quads are overwhelmed |
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True, but it has its limits. Anything that stops or radically slows the board, and or big gusts of wind, can and will send you over the nose, even with both feet in the straps. Experience has demonstrated that more times than I wish to remember. However, never an injury other than bumps, bruises or scrapes. |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 11:47 am Post subject: |
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| techno900 wrote: | | Anything that stops or radically slows the board, and or big gusts of wind, can and will send you over the nose, even with both feet in the straps. |
I see no way in which spreading our stance four inches (the adjustment range of most boards) ... or two feet (stepping way forward in extreme circumstances) ... further apart lengthwise would affect speed or drag on any board between 5 and 13 feet long. Aside from MFP, all the board knows is where our cg is moment to moment. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've gone over the bars with my back foot ... heck, even one toe ... in my back strap. In one case that foot came out of its Okespor dry bootie, leaving the bootie in the strap. In the other 3 or 4 cases, all in my first few years of WSing, that back foot deliberately and consciously brought my board, including longboards, with me over the nose as insurance against front foot injury.
That's not counting hitting sandbars or pearling at speed; as you say, there are limits. Fortunately I've done each of those only once.
What a longer stance does do is allow us to shift our cg over a longer range along the deck without the hassles and distractions of footwork, especially getting in and out of straps and stepping over them. I've seen how-to videos of guys slogging with both feet almost together, as though that makes ANY sense in the real world. Just last Sunday I slogged to shore with my back foot in its strap and the front forward of the mast, because my cg had to be near the mast foot to keep the board level in the lulls and the gust-to-lull power ratio was easily 15-20, as in 5 mph holes separated from 20 mph gusts by sub-seconds as I approached shore. Both feet near the mast would = instant launch, but I simply sheeted in in the gusts and planed because my weight shift was instantaneous and my back foot launch-proofed me. The same principles apply to tiny sinkers as well as 13-foot longboards; it's just far more critical on the former. |
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gregnw44
Joined: 23 Jul 2008
Posts: 783
Location: Seattle, Wa
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Darbonne wrote: | No simple answer, it takes practice and more practice pushing past your comfort zone little by little.
Yep, no glass ceiling. Just like learning to play music. The more you improve, the more it becomes about subtlety and details.
Practicing works!
Now if I could just figure out how to do a quote on this board. |
Darbonne - to "quote" you click the "quote" button in the person's reply that you want to quote. And then... "you" will get a box to write your reply in, that already has the person's quote in it.
Hope that helps 
Anyway, I also agree with you and techno900 that it takes lots of practice and pushing past comfort zones little by little.
And I also agree with Iso, that there are not many "absolutes" in this sport... that there are MANY variables... and the answer to most specific questions is, "it depends".
Next - short answers are fine between people that know each other well. A coach and an athlete who work together constantly, only have to give a short phrase, and each understands quite well what to do.
But with windsurfer's from all over the county, who don't know each other, and some with English as a 2nd language... and also windsurfer's being a kinda technical group (not all, but many)...
Therefore detailed explanations can be very helpful to some of them.
Other's who don't like long answers, can quickly delete them, no worries.
Greg |
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Darbonne
Joined: 27 Jan 2012
Posts: 252
Location: Farmerville, Louisiana
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 12:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Thanks Greg. I think I get into trouble when I try to edit the quoted post. Oh well. |
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gregnw44
Joined: 23 Jul 2008
Posts: 783
Location: Seattle, Wa
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 1:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Darbonne wrote: | | Thanks Greg. What an awesome windsurfer you are... and so nice and helpful. I agree, people should be more polite on this forum sometimes. I think I get into trouble when I try to edit the quoted post. Oh well. |
Ha-ha
I think you can edit inside their quote... if you just stay inside the beginning and ending symbols.
Greg -
PS - I want to thank the OP Del... for asking a question, and providing a video... although this all went quite a bit farther than most anybody needs.
If you read his very first initial post... he answers his own question with the correct answer |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 1:19 pm Post subject: |
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| gregnw44 wrote: | short answers are fine between people that know each other well. A coach and an athlete who work together constantly, only have to give a short phrase, and each understands quite well what to do.
But with windsurfer's from all over the county, who don't know each other, and some with English as a 2nd language... and also windsurfer's being a kinda technical group (not all, but many)...
Therefore detailed explanations can be very helpful to some of them.
Other's who don't like long answers, can quickly delete them, no worries.
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That, plus ... We ask questions because we don't know the answer. If we don't know the answer, we probably don't know every relevant question we or lurkers should have asked.
Don't forget that those of us over 30 didn't grow up confined to sound bites and 144-character farts ... er, I guess they call them tweets (same difference). Can you see the Twitter generation resolving complex issues?
Answering the bigger, extrapolated dilemma also helps readers apply their new knowledge to different but related issues that crop up.
Some of the posters in my killfile are there simply because they post only vapid, useless one-liners not worth the blink it takes to scan them. There's no there there.
Thorough answers mitigate all those problems. If the Twitter generation has become slow readers, that's their -- and the future's -- problem. |
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PeconicPuffin
Joined: 07 Jun 2004
Posts: 1830
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2015 3:08 pm Post subject: |
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The OP's original post was "Comments on my planing technique?" One of the main comments he received was being told that one of his next steps is sailing in the foot straps. That was undoubtedly correct, as sailing in the footstraps makes a sailor more efficient, will keep them planing more smoothly and with more speed, keeps them on the board in bouncy conditions etc. Using footstraps as catapult prevention technology will work some, but it's not their primary (or secondary) purpose, and if they are looked at as that you're going to build yourself into some terrible sailing technique for the purpose of avoiding and surviving catapult conditions. And let us remember one more time the OP is on a Kona sailing in light conditions. He would do very well and improve greatly if he were to take advantage of front foot only planing in light winds.
Isobars has been a lone voice in the wind for decades about his BFF (back foot first) technique and sailing with only the back foot in the straps in chaotic conditions. While this is an effective survival technique on tiny boards in pitching swell conditions (where 30+ mph winds are turning on and off) as a general tactic it's inefficient, and teaches the sailor nothing. Thirty years ago when basic windsurfing techniques were still being developed and sorted out, this back foot strap technique was part of the great experiment, but it's long since been worked out that it's not only an inferior technique (except for high wind survival) but that it's a learning dead end, by virtue of teaching bad habits and inefficiency, which impedes learning early planing, sailing upwind and downwind fast, jibing, planing through lulls etc. It's part of the package that requires sailing overpowered all the time to compensate for lack of skill. It's why spreading the footstraps out makes sense to him...he's always working to muscle the gear to work for him, as opposed to using balance and smoothness and tuning and technique.
To the OP: Scargo's original comments were excellent, with the caveat that sailing only in the front footstrap is a technique (an excellent technique) for planing in winds that are so light that moving your foot back 4" into the back strap would put too much weight on the tail and dig it in.
Taking some lessons with a quality instructor or taking an ABK clinic would do a lot for your overall set up, stance, planing technique etc and point you in the right direction to teach yourself even more. Good luck to you (and reread Scargo!)
_________________
Michael
http://www.peconicpuffin.com |
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