I'd like to get into shortboard freestyle a bit more, but it seems to be so gear and weather dependent, and a bit risky if you're in your 40s, that I can't see how to do it. There's not enough good days for small gear as it is, and as others have said if the wind's good and you're at the coast why not hit the waves?
You can understand how it would be different in Europe, where guys go away for a 2 or 3 week vacation in a windsurfing spot and sail all day every day.
The injury thing can be a problem. It's easy to talk tough but they leave you with problems; I'm off work and off sailing yet again at the moment because of an ancient injury from the days when none of us knew how to loop safely. You can lose so much sailing from one crash it's not always worth it. I'd be INCREDIBLY pissed off if I lost a season on the One Design because of a shortboard freestyle injury.
Well, you just convinced me that a 6-month season is the only good thing about being here in north america then.
I'll use the winter for shoulder surgery (r. cuff). Providing I can sail again after this, I won't have missed d*ck but a winter of hockey and 2 weeks at Hatteras.
Surgery would be nice; mine's chronic and caused by the fact that they couldn't put my face back together properly the first time I went under the knife.
The rotator's my only other problem, but the great thing is that Laser training is just like a harder version of physio and it fixes it right up. I'm going to try to get a new boat on prescription soon.
Surgery would be nice; mine's chronic and caused by the fact that they couldn't put my face back together properly the first time I went under the knife.
The rotator's my only other problem, but the great thing is that Laser training is just like a harder version of physio and it fixes it right up. I'm going to try to get a new boat on prescription soon.
A bit of oldschool or light wind freestyle is cool and anyone can do a lot of that stuff without risk of injury, except a bad back from uphauling too often if it's really light. But to take it to a high level, yeah, it must take a special kind of person...
Most of us get hooked on windsurfing because of planing, and then I guess riding waves brings the thrill of surfing into it...serious freestyle might not be worth it on a basis of the risk versus return factor...
I'll be happy when I can pull off my heli tacks, duck gybes and, heck, regular gybes more consistently, and maybe a few other things...it all helps improve your sailing, and as we all know, a good sailor is a happy sailor!!!
I saw a guy doing some cool moves on the Swan River this afternoon at what I think is Pelican Point. Its the first time I've seen some busting a move in real life. The wind was not quite strong enough but he could still do some little jump and then then land the board on its nose and then I think spin the sail and board downwind on the nose and do a 180 I think. Then sort of keep spinning or something and sail off.
Description is deliberatly vague as I wasn't sure what was happening but it looked good.
Freestyle has reached the point of ridiculously difficult, and for what? ...... a little momentary skip above, or slide across the water?
There are so many other options for young aussie kids to do with their free time that would be a hell of a lot more fun. I think it is the same reason aussies are pretty crap at soccer by world standards. There are just better ways to spend your time. Also, freestyle boards are expensive.
Imagine you grew up on an island with a totally flat lagoon where it blows constantly. So you start windsurfing before the age of 10. You plane, gybe, you plane, you gybe, you plane...by the time you're 13, that $h!t is gonna be getting old. SO, you start to make the gybes a little fancier, then do a gybe then a heli tack then a rig 360 or whatever...then you fool around a little more...by the time you're 18 nothing you do is even recognisable to most windsurfers around the world.
It's natural for those guys, otherwise they'd go nuts...but if you live in a place with waves, choppy ocean, varying conditions...freestyle is gonna be harder and the other stuff provides plenty of fun and challenges, so why force it??
Wow - I'd been wondering the exact same thing. I don't know the answer, but I do know that here in Melbourne we get some ok freestyle conditions on the bay in the Northerlies, and that Sandy Point is probably the best freestyle place I've ever seen (ok, so Dahab may be more consistently windy, but Sandy doesn't require constant work to stay upwind in the flat water).
For those people who are too worried about twisting their ankles - make sure your footstraps are super huge so you don't get your feet caught in 'em. As for injury, I'm 29, I crash freestyle moves on an alarmingly regular basis, and I've never hurt myself anything more than knocking the wind out of myself on a flatwater loop. <Touch Wood> Seriously, it's not nearly as bad as it looks. Yes - it does require a lot of patience - I've crashed more spinnyflicky moves than I can remember, but the 'slippery' feeling of the board sliding backwards at 20knots mid-Vulcan makes my hair stand on end.
OK, so you don't have the epic constant conditions that are available elsewhere in the world, and it's a load more expensive to travel somewhere from here than it is to go from the UK to Egypt, but freestyling is taking off... look at the number of people who are interested in getting a Turfdog on that thread today... Australia's been slow, but freestyle is gaining in popoularity. Give it another couple of summers, especially here in Melbourne, so that the skill level gets up there so there are people nailing flakas at every sailing spot, and it will really take off.
but when it's horizontal, you would love it to last for ever
oops, i thought you said folk dancing
