Last SUnday - Light wind fun!

Hi Peeps,

Last Sunday was a very weak seabreeze late in the afternoon. I grabbed a sesh along with John who was also riding a 17m Ozone (2010) and also on a Sector 60.

I was on the water for a little over 90 miutes and shot it all on GoPro. Most of the sesh was in the waves out on the outer reef but the light and a little fogging made most of the footage unuseable .

Wind averaged around 7-8 knots with a short burst for around 10 minutes to about 10-11 knots before dropping back to almost nothing as we came back into the beach.

I love the smooth water, speed and challenge of light wind. I'll make my next vid a big air one!

^^^^^^^^^^
Seen Darren in 40knots - Kitestock 2009 Big air comp!!!!

great choice of track. love morcheeba

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the encouragement. I dig all aspects of kiting from uber light winds to extreme gales and boosting into orbit. A great source of personal fulfilment is seeing others learn and improve from my experience, so I am motivated to offer more tuitional type videos as I find the time.

Stay tuned and I'll put a simple short vid together on tacking upwind on course boards and other stuff as conditions allow.

@ bigeezee, Yep, big fan here! I hadn't heard it for ages and thought it would be appropriate.

Cheers all,

DM

Nice work daz. Interesting to note the ozone likes to be fully sheeted in.

Hey daz any tips on that 'reverse jibe', (don't know what to call it). where you spin the board around the other way, makes sense especially in light winds.

Can you quickly break down the board, feet and leg movements? Just quickly as I can see most of it.

The benefit of being a shop owner is that you use top notch gear so you can trust that it won't fail (hope so anyway)

That would be a big swim if you snapped a line this far out

Pretty impressive, I am still not convinced that it is great fun but never tried a race board and never flown anything over 12 meteres so will have to give it a bash one day!

Hi Guys,

Seems there is a lot of misunderstanding about tacking and race board stuff in general. The transitions in the video are standard gybe (first one), then normal tacking in the remainder.

A normal tack is where the nose of the board passes from one tack to the other through the "eye of the wind" or directly into the wind. The rider remains upwind of the bar the whole time.

A duck tack is a bit different. The board still follows the upwind turn through the eye of the wind, but the bar goes upwind of the rider. This is most easily achieved by riding toeside into the transition and toeside carving into the wind, whilst bringing the bar upwind of the body and you "push" the bar all the way around until the bar goes through the eye of the wind and round onto a normal heelside riding position.

I'll see how I go filming this on the next vid. I can do it on a twin tip so I guess I can do it on a race board (never tried).

There is no real advantage to "duck tacking" a race board unless you are throwing in a very short tack to make an upwind marker and you want to stay in the straps. I doubt it would be useful with the modern race boards, having wide spaced straps which would make toesiding a race board all but impossible. It's hard enough on the Sector!

@eppo

The normal tack is easy.
1. Starting a tack from Starboard to Port, just bring the kite slowly up to 1pm as you slow a little (not too much) into the transition. Prepare by taking your back foot out of the strap and placing it in front of the back footstrap. Ease your front foot in the strap or loosen it in preparation of a quick exit from the strap.

2. crank the carving turn upwind with your feet and at the same time crank your back hand on the kite towards the new direction.

3. As you go through the eye of the wind with the nose of the board, shift your bodyweight into the harness to become light on your feet whilst keeping the kite sheeted in for full power and lift. Flick the board around with your front foot, by pulling it around under your now weightless body by bending the knee forcefully. This should flick the board the last 45 degrees and will leave it under you. Lift your back foot at the same time so you hang in the harness momentarily and land back on the board with the new tack and feet in position.

Probably easier to explain with a slow mo video.

Just takes a bit of info and then some practice.

Cheers,

DM