Well done, Anita!

When are we going to have your celebration?

Hey Anita, ya turning into a distance queen

Congrats on the PB Anita,good stuff 

Who needs to make gybes when you get a PB instead

What celebration is that?

Hardie, I could have gone further, I really wanted to keep going until I cracked a good gybe, but I was going out for dinner...

Damo, The Pb was some consolation but I really wanted a good gybe.

yep a perfect gybe is as good a rush if not better than a pb imho

as for isaf's if anyone's interested, it was an intense learning experience we had a couple of good races in some extreme weather on the first day thanks to how much the other boats were struggling and then we had one more good race in the lightest wind race at the start of the last day but other than that we had alot of last places, we just couldn't keep up thanks to two things firstly that as soon as it was over 8 knots we just weren't heavy enough to put the power down and secondly our boat was rubbish in comparisson to the other ones

was a huge eye opener racing against the top 50 sailors in the world in performace skiffs at the moment, learnt alot and was well worth it but now i am only windsurfing and working till febuary 

so the school is never open on mondays or tuesdays so thats when i'll do my travelling, but tomorrow as i'm still feeling tired i'm thinking a nice river sesh to get back into it, hope to see everyone back out on the water soon

Nice one Anita. always good when its a suprise.

Can you dance Anita cause all I can say about gybing is FOOTWORK, FOOTWORK,FOOTWORK work on the footwork. Mark explained it beautifully to us, then I put the board on the grass in the backyard and praticed the foot change(with imaginary rig) The neighbors must have thought I was really losing it. But once you can stop having to think about footwork you can focus on rest of the gybe mechanics. Also I found my gybes improved when I start the foot change sooner than I was, if you can get it done early you then have your weight balanced, the board stable and are ready to power on after rig flip.    

Sounds like you had a good time Scarrgo, see you out there soon.

I think my footwork is OK. It's pretty automatic now. It's grabbing the rig after the flip which is my problem. It always seems too far away on the downwind side of the board, and if I do grab it, my hand is right at the front of the boom. Any ideas welcome 'cos I'm stumped.

Anita,  what you need to do is two things.

1) Have your old hand facing palm-down, and the new hand (the one that grabs the new side of the boom) facing palm-up.  This stops your elbows knocking together as you do the flip.

2) Practice the flips on the beach, do at least 50 before going out.  Yes, 50!  Then you'll have it nailed.

Scarrgo,went down a couple of times to watch the sailing,was an awesome spectacle,saw you in the 49er annex as I drove past but when I returned to say hi you had taken off sailing out of the harbour.

Those 49ers motor along !!

Nebs, I do grab on the new side with palm up.

50 on the beach? My arms will be worn out before I start! Seriously though, I have no trouble doing them on the beach. It's when the board is moving that I have problems.

do you think in then anita that your problems are related to the board bouncing and moving around while your doing the gybe

i used to have huge problems with this as i'm so light there are two tricks to help if this is your problem, firstly i found that concentrating on being really really low with very bent knees helps alot as it means alot more of the bumps are absorbed and the board stays on the water more making it easier to control also being low helps with the rig flip and the other trick to keeping the board in the water is what you will start to do once you are past just trying to get your gybes but trying to improve them, the best way to keep the board in the water is just to go into the gybe really hard, justin from the school said to me one day that to do a really good gybe you should come out of the other side huffing and puffing thats how hard you need to push, that was one of the best tips for my gybes that i got from anyone

It was really flat yesterday, bouncing was not an issue. I was concentrating on a good carve, trying to keep my speed up as much as possible, concentrating on keeping my weight forward, mast forward, sheeted in. Then opening the sail, change feet, move hand down the boom, flip the rig. I think I have the sail/mast in the wrong position when I flip it but what is wrong about it I can't work out.

After one failed gybe yesterday I noticed my boom was loose - the clamp had come undone. I thought "I'll do that up when I fall off during the next gybe". Wouldn't you know it, I didn't fall in that time, and at the end of the gybe the boom was right at the bottom of the boom cut out and as loose as anything. I thought maybe that was a clue so I set it low for the next couple of gybes, and it did feel better to gybe with, but really weird to sail with.

yep lower boom = lower body in the gybe, makes it harder to fall off 

Anita.

I am working on improving my gybes also, can't wait till I nail a planing gybe. Trying to keep up with Grumpy. Anyway this is what I have found so far. RayGun is right "Footwork" do your footwork as you are straight downwind or as the rig goes light. Concerntrate on one thing at a time. Carve in, sheet in, footwork, leave the rig flip to last, you can even sail out of the gybe clew first(tip keep clew pointing into wind), look through the gybe to were you want to be. Checkout the link for footwork tips and more(notice new front foot is always pointing to nose of board, not across board) Hope this is off some help to you.

www.wind-surf.com.au/tips.html