Does anyone have any tips on maintaining speed when heading into large chop. As soon as get going I come across an unavoidable waist height vertical chop leave the water and plow into the one behind it, losing all my speed. How do I get some flow going?
Set up might help a bit, try moving your mast track fwd, raise your boom hieght, and get your harness lines balanced
Softer legs,
Keep your leg and body position correct but absorb more of the bounce with the legs.
I try and absorb as much as possible with my legs but a lot of the larger chop has pretty prominant lips so the board gets airbourne even when I've absorbed as much as i can. What position should i take up once the board does leave the water?
i go into scared mode when the chop gets too bad.
i find heading higher spills some speed and makes thing more controllable.
maybe an idea.
looks like everyone agrees, soft legs and sail higher.
something else i find works well especially on bigger kit.
is long harness lines so you can hike out further. adjustable are good cause if things get hectic and you need a bit more control you can let them out on the fly.
it also lets you get the weight off the board so you can ride the chop with your legs.
It really depends on the conditions how high you have your boom.
It does help in short chop but in open swell and rought stuff you might tend to get lifted to much and the board gets out of control. better to have the boom lower and stay in control. Move your body weight foward helps too.
But really if ya hitting vertical weist hight stuff there nothing really thats going to help except to jump it
ta vando
Back in the days of surf slalom, when we'd meet incoming waves at full-on slalom speed, the answer was to "pre-jump"; that is, you'd actually do a small chop hop and jump over the crest. That way, the crest wouldn't kick you into the air big time as you'd be doing a low jump over it. Apparently the idea came from snow skiing.
Apart from that, lots of good ideas above.
I get this as well. Thou I have a dedicated freestyle board so it doesn't handle the chop as well as a lot of other boards. I have sailed a few other narrower boards and found them to go over the chop a lot better. So I guess equipment comes into the equation a bit as well.
I find that sometimes going faster helps, like just blasting over the chop, but a few times this has ended in some pretty big stacks, so safe way i find usually is to head upwind a bit more to lose some speed and to have some more control. Either way i think theres like a bad spot in relation to speed where you end up slaming into the face of the next piece of chop, so either you go slower then that speed, or faster? But yeah I'm really only a beginner but thats the feeling I get from it.
Cheers for the tips, the one I'm most keen to try is this "pre-jump" concept. Seems to make sense as the board wont get loaded up on the lip and should...in theory...go over it without getting boosted. I'll try the set up tweaks and keeping the legs soft. I've been watching that robbie Naish clip of him blasting over chop at speed and he seems to keep relatively still whether he's on the water on in the air, i think it's all in the legs. My freestyle board wouldn't be doing me any favours either.
Over sheeting for a second each time I go over a crest forces the nose down, makes the board bear off keeping it stuck to the water, no lose of speed. It's a little like pumping the sail once but only with the back hand on the peak of the chop or swell.
Another is taking off on one chop and landing on the back of the next, smooth when it works.
Lock you knees and point into the wind as hard and fast as you can,keeping your body as stiff as an ironing board.
man up and bust the biggest jump you can off it, feel free to remove a hand or too for the crowd..
