Monday, October 1, 2012

Beginner Windsurfing: How to Reorient After Falling

The other day a beginner windsurfer (at the uphauling stage) told me he preferred shallow water because he spent a lot of time standing in the water positioning the sail. There are certainly some good reasons to prefer shallow water, like being able to walk back to the beach if you can't sail back, but I don't think positioning the sail in the water is one of the good reasons. That prompted me to write this instructional blog post. The gist of it is this: Getting off the board to position the sail is an unnecessary waste of time, and there's a way you can avoid ever having to do it. (Or at least until you start learning waterstarting, but that's an advanced skill for another day.) Even in shallow water, it's usually a lot more efficient to get ON the board before worrying about positioning the sail. Here's my pictorial tutorial:

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7 comments:

Johnny Douglass said...

Good post. In step 2, I always planted my feet as shown but then pulled the uphaul either slightly left or slightly right of directly over the mast base. It never helped me to think of pushing my feet if I wasn't paying attention to how I was pulling the uphaul.

Anonymous said...

Thanks James. I just started learning to windsurf and this is very helpful. I'll be using it a lot I think. It definitely solves one of my "problems".

James Douglass said...

Hi David- Thanks for the comment! I'm glad the post was useful to somebody. :)

Unknown said...

Hi james,

Nice blog and nice post. Can i translate this post to spanish???
I intend to use for non comercial use to help our windsurfers sailing club members.
(http://adragalicia.wordpress.com)
Thanks in advance.

Paco

Unknown said...

Hi james,

Nice blog and nice post. Can i translate this post to spanish???
I intend to use for non comercial use to help our windsurfers sailing club members.
(http://adragalicia.wordpress.com)
Thanks in advance.

Paco

James Douglass said...

Paco- You can certainly translate it to Spanish! I hope it's useful for your students. :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks!

You can see now in Spanish:

http://adragalicia.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/windsurfing-drizada-paso-a-paso/

or

http://wp.me/pr7iP-EV

Best Regards,

Paco