JOHN SKYE
The easiest thing to do is drop your boom down a bit, which helps to get your gear more controllable. I extend my lines as well. Drop the boom, extend the lines and then sit a little more over the top of the board; I kind of squat down in my stance to keep it under control. I like it when conditions are rough and choppy. It gives me a chance that others will make more mistakes. When it gets really windy a lot of people have a tendency to put loads of downhaul on to kill the power of the sail. When you do that the head is really open and the board does not stay in the water and bounces. Although you kill a bit of power from the sail, you lose all the control from the board.
From a design point of view, getting a sail working well in chop is pretty tricky, especially in somewhere like Sotavento. The basics are all about getting the right balance of downforce (which pushes the board down), and lift and having the board free. There are various ways to achieve this, but a lot comes from the head of the sail. If its very open at the top, the board will fly nicely, whilst if it’s more closed it will push the board down and give you control. A lot of this is in the design of the sail, but it can also be tuned. Often half a cm more downhaul will make the board lift and fly better, or taking off half a cm will have the board pinned to the water, so at the top level it’s all about finding that balance.
In Fuerte’ I always have trouble finding the balance between coming in and going out. Coming in you are going over the back of the chop and really you want the board flying with the nose up. Then heading out to sea it’s the opposite. The board is constantly flying away and you are looking for downforce to control it. So getting the balance is really tricky. Normally I aim to get it best coming in, which is the all-important first reach, and then on the way out I hang on and deal with it!
“ The easiest thing to do is drop your boom down a bit.”