- Ideal conditions: 2-3 Beaufort, smooth water
- Ideal material: Longboards or wind SUPs with daggerboards, light sails
- Learning requirements: Start, Control system, Crossing
You will encounter countless variations of jibes in the course of your surfing life - manoeuvres such as a glided power jibe have acute addictive potential. The first foundation for everything that follows is laid with the basic jibe. For this reason, riding a jibe makes sense especially if you want to "destroy height", i.e. aim for a destination that is further downwind than the starting point.
To practise the basic jibe, you should also use the largest possible board with plenty of volume and a daggerboard, as well as a medium-sized and not too heavy rig.
As soon as the basic jibe is secure, you can try out the fast jibe. This is the next stage on the way to the power jibe.
The most common mistakes when jibing
There are more than enough sources of error with the jibe - but if you use a large board for practising and are not too shy to go out on the water in light winds, you will soon have the right technique down pat. Because the fast jibe forms the basis for all planing jibes in your later surfing life, it is worth learning a clean technique for this manoeuvre twice over, preferably together with an instructor at a professional windsurfing school. Experience from countless jibing courses has shown that the mistakes made when jibing are mainly concentrated in three areas: Falling off during the initiation, correct timing and the final shove. You can find the key points for jibing in the article "Luffing and falling away"everything else can now be found here:
"Jibing is a shaky business!"
If you can do the basic jibe and then switch to the fast version, you will first have to get used to the new timing for skiing.
With the basic jibe, the back hand is already released from the boom on the downwind. On small boards and in waves, however, this phase is shaky or even impossible, as you only hold the sail with one hand for a longer period of time and there is no tension in the sail. However, it is precisely this pull that gives you security in difficult conditions - you have something to "hold on to" during the entire gybe. You can see how this works in the gallery!
"When I'm skiing, I'm drawn downwind from the board!"
Shifting is the last hurdle in learning the fast jibe.
The reason why the sail falls to leeward into the water when jibing is that the sail is too far out of the vertical during the shift.
Basic rule: "Always hoist a sail with the mast upright!"
Outlook: Foot control
The fast jibe is the most important foundation of the planing power jibe. If you acquire the appropriate sail and board feeling in light winds, you will also learn planing jibes much faster. While planing jibes are steered almost exclusively with foot control, i.e. edge loading, the influence of foot control is very small in light winds. Generally speaking, on boards without a daggerboard, you can reduce the radius slightly if you put weight on the inside edge of the turn - this also applies to longboards with the daggerboard folded in. On boards with a daggerboard or centre fin, the steering impulse is reversed - light pressure on the outside edge helps you to turn.
