Most of us Moth weekend warriors struggle with (and are obsessed) by the foiling gybe. Well I think I may have stumbled upon the answer to anyone trying to master this essential skill. I was looking through the photos taken by Chris Bashall at Hayling last weekend (yes we have our own resident photographer who is out most weekends) and he took a pic of Si Payne "doing the meerkat" as I like to describe it.
Si here is in mid-gybe and is flacking his battens before heating the boat up and hiking. Now I have found that having crawled under the boom (always moving across earlier than I would gybing a normal boat), I assume this position and, using a combination of steering behind the back and mainsheet, get the boat to settle on the new gybe. Yesterday, I noticed that adopting this position I can also transfer my weight back in to the centre when the wind drops light and get the boat "hooked" into the new gybe before sitting down and heating the boat up.
For the larger less agile amongst us, this is a vital skill because you are not committing your weight to the new side too early before you have got the boat sorted out. I find it amazing how long you can keep foiling whilst maintaining this position. You can almost hear the boat rapping its fingers going "when on earth are you getting your act together?"
The other thing I have been working on is loads of speed into the gybe and as smooth an arc as I can manage during it. Anyway hope this helps others like me master this challenge.
Hi
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome
Nice description.... what also helped me was dipping the leeward bar into the turn, not in the water, but initiating leeward heal to start the turn. The other bit is when moving from Meercatting to sitting, let go if the tiller extension. If you ahve a bungee it works great as an auto pilot (dont try it without!)
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