Windsurfing help please!

Question
Hi, I'm 150 lbs and have 2 boards, a 160L bic techno and a 115L mistral syncro; I also have a range of sails, a 5.5, a 6.4, a 7.0 and a 8.0.

I have experienced planing and have been in both foot straps for extended periods of time in both boards, but I'm not consistently able to handle either board!  Especially when the wind's high I find that the nose of the board always seems to round up into the wind- especially if I try for the footstraps.  I'm not looking down at them and I'm trying to maintain pressure on the toes and speed but it almost always happens when the wind gets up at all.  It seems like everybody else is blasting past me while I'm struggling to get the board pointed downwind and moving again!

Thanks for any help/tips you can give me!


Answer
Hey Lloyd,

A couple of things that could be causing your dilemma is mast position and sail size for the higher winds.

Rule of thumb for mast position, light winds - forward, moderate winds - middle, high winds - back. You may need to adjust a bit for each position but this gets you in the general area.

Also, if your mast if too forward in higher winds, it puts the center of effort(CE) of the sail forward and with you in the footstraps, it causes you to be back from the CE and thus the board will round up.

For your body position in higher winds, hang down from your harness with your knees bent. This puts weight on the mast which will help drive the board off wind. Also push with your front foot and try to pull your back foot towards you. This will help steer the board along with the toe pressure.

As for your sail size, if you are rigged for the current conditions and the wind picks up, you may need to add more downhaul to the sail in order to spill more wind and depower the sail a bit. Sailing overpowered is a fairly advanced form of sailing and learning high wind techniques is better done when just powered. If adding downhaul doesn't help much and the wind looks to stay up, rig down one sail size and see how that works. Your sails should have a fairly good wind range but knowing how much wind is just too much for the sail you have on and your abilities is something learned by trial and error. Lots of folks say rig for the lulls and be overpowered in the gusts but learning high wind sailing is better if you rig for the gusts and maybe slog a bit in the lulls.

Check out windsurfingmag.com under instruction and read all the tips in the intermediate and advanced sections to glean some more info on rigging, mast, & body positions.

Hope this helps.
Keep on sailing,
Windlover