Gybe Manipulation

Like the golf swing, it looks so simple when done well. And yet the humble carve gybe continues to frustrate generations of Windies. Peter Hart describes how relatively simple changes of habit, like adjusting your stance height, can prod you to the next level, especially in chop.

- Peter Hart

I’m sat in Ialyssos in the north of Rhodes. My friend Dave White, who used to run dealer meetings out here, described it as ‘Clacton on steroids.’ He wasn’t being rude. He loves Clacton. What he meant was, that at both you launch from a pebbly foreshore into a side-shore wind from the left and onto a ‘bump and jump’ heaven … or ‘chop maelstrom’ depending on your point of view. But it’s good chop, if there is such a thing, a bit confused by the shore but when blown along by a consistent breeze, forms into rolling swell further out to sea.

The ‘steroid’ bit is that in Rhodes the sea is turquoise (not Thames Estuary beige); shorts and a rashie are slightly too warm and there’s a beach bar 20 metres from the launch spot selling beer in frozen glasses for €2.

On day one, one of my group reveals a refreshing attitude. He’d spent a good chunk of the winter on the silky smooth waters of Lac Bay in Bonaire where, he said, he could do everything. “I get here and I find out I can do nothing … it’s brilliant!” Brilliant in that he was happy to have his flaws exposed. “On Lac Bay I was planing out of most of my gybes - I haven’t done one here yet. There’s always another level!” Well spotted sir.

SAIL BY FEEL NOT NUMBERS

Learning a move, whether it be the tennis forehand or the carve gybe, it makes perfect sense to select an arena that gives you the best chance of early success. For gybing that is of course, flat water. With success comes a joyously warm feeling and you get an immediate sense of the ‘whole’ – that is to say the length and tempo of the move and how the different stages, the set-up, carve, transition and exit, all link and flow together.