Waterstarting in the footstraps!

Woo Hoo! From persistent rain and no wind despite a good forecast, to a HONKING afternoon (and possibly the next few days)!

Today for the first time I managed the daring feat of waterstarting with my feet in the straps, hooking in halfway up and thus going from zero to fully planing in about one second!

This means I was overpowered, right?

Damn that was fun!

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what happened on the next few secs that'll determine if you were overpowered!

Nofin darin about it willyboy its just the easy way to take off in the rest zone ..Practice ya hooked in super windy inside waterstarts regular and prepare your self for the outbound super charge

Fark me willy avent used that size since sweet sixteen...mite get back to you on that one day.

Dude, I've waterstarted a 9.8 ...which means I should've been using a smaller sail!

The thing that I've been finding tricky is flipping the sail in the water...sometimes as you flip it, the wind just slams it down hard, mast first. Other times the sail flips well but is pushed down into the water anyway. And sometimes it flips and stays up; what's the secret to getting this right?



BTW here's the forecast for Singapore:



THs is updated daily, so if you are checking it tonght, you will see that we might get up to 26 knots tomorrow! But 20 will do nicely!

(Where's Singapore? OK, look at the lines; go to the centre, turn left, somewhere just below and left of the centre is a tiny green dot. Between Indonesia and peninsular Malaysia. That's it. On that tiny island is a club where about 200-300 people store their boards and sails....in 1984 there was a club with 1,400 members, each with theor own board, making it (so they say) the biggest windsurf club in the world. FYI. )

WIND WIND WIND!!! After all these weeks and months of desperation sailing!!!



Formula? What's that?

Well powered, certainly! On modern boards this isn't that hard to do if you drive your weight down through the boom, practically lifting your feet off the board to get it planing. I do this after jumps that I don't land. Never tried on an 8 meter sail, though!

Know what ya mean Wetwilly. Ever since I took the sport back up I find the sails drive underwater whenever I flip them from the clew. I will swear my old wave sails from 13 years ago flipped super easy on top of the water. Granted, I use 2 cammed sails, 8.5 and 6.5. Perhaps that's the reason.

One thing that I've started doing is to fly the sails no matter which way it is facing (even if the wrong direction) then either waterstart and gybe or let it flip from the flying positon. The sail is then on top of the water and in the correct position. Flipping from the clew seems the easy way but not if it sinks your sail and sometimes the board. This works for me, but perhaps someone knows a better way for large cammed sails.

On another note Wet Willy, I bought an old formula board to replace my broke 131 carve for low wind days and I love it. I recall you saying you have a 8.5 Ezzy Freeride. Would you say it has almost as much kick as the Infinity? I need to replace my current one which is falling apart and if the freeride has only slightly less kick without all the hassles i've had with cams, I'll be sold.

Oh yeah, I sometimes just put my back foot in the footstrap during a waterstart when it's super overpowered to help avoid a catapult. Only a few times have I had both feet in after landing a jump badly but feet still and and sail still flying.