Pushing For Victory - The Push Tack

This month Peter Hart dissects an old favourite, the push tack. It’s vaguely functional, happens on, rather than above the water, but still introduces elements key to many new skool stunts.

- Peter Hart

It was around the turn of the millennium and the old bull was starting to lose control of the herd. Younger, fitter bulls had infiltrated his well guarded patch and were turning heifers’ heads with their new twisty, slidey, unnecessarily flamboyant styles. Did he surrender his harem and wander miserable and alone into the undergrowth? Or did the wily old fellah have one last trick up his sleeve?

Okay – I’ll quit with the bovine allegory. I had just come back from Dahab (oh how we miss dear Dahab). The manager of the club Mistral centre, the hilarious Ronan, told me that I must be as bored with my same old same old routine of carving tricks as he was; and that he had a new one for me which could breathe a little life into my ageing repertoire whilst not placing too much strain on ligaments or joints. After three days and not a little humiliation, I cracked this hitherto unseen stunt.

Back on the home patch when the time was right and a small crowd of peers was dawdling in the shallows, I carved downwind … but before they could mutter, ‘oh here comes another bloody gybe’, I rotated body and head through 180° to end up back-winded clew first; then carved back the other way up and through the wind to end up clew first on the other tack.

“What was that?” They cried with one momentarily impressed voice. It did look good… not so much wildly spectacular as cunningly technical and unusual to the point where the young guns were persuaded to abandon their popping and sliding for a moment to try and master this new ‘old school’ trick, which of course they did. But not without a few hiccups, as there is more to it than initially meets the eye.