TAMING THE STORM
HOW TO SAIL IN STRONG WIND CONDITIONS
This feature originally appeared in the January/February 2014 issue of Windsurf Magazine. To read more features like this first, Print and Digital subscriptions are available. Prices include delivery globally for 10 x issues a year!)
Hurricane Jude, if such it was, along with a proper depression-ridden autumn, has persuaded many to give the big winds a proper lash. So what’s the trick? Is there one? Or is it just a case of hanging on and doing what you normally do a bit more quickly? Peter Hart, who has suffered multiple batterings over the years, advises how to dip your toes into stormy waters.
‘Heaven’s Breath’ is a book published in the 80s by Lyall Watson. It has nothing to do with dental hygiene. It’s all about the wind and its huge influence on geography, science, human behaviour and life in general. Some facts don’t appear to have much relevance to windsurfing, like how a certain ancient Filipino fishing tribe navigated by sensing the wind and swell through their testicles (I tried it the other day and ended up in Le Havre, it doesn’t work), but others do.
Force 6 is apparently the point at which Nature starts to go into shock. Birds give up the unequal struggle and roost. Grazing animals lie down, predators stop hunting. It also causes problems for humans mentally and mechanically. Air above the ground is stratified. Standing in a storm, your toes will be in a calm, your waist in a moderate breeze and your head in a near gale. In the face of such an uneven onslaught, staying upright becomes a gymnastic feat. At force 6 (just 22 knots Ed.) the skin transmits warning signals to the brain and we become anxious and irritable.
Force 6 is also a crisis point for seafarers. Surely it’s not so very far from a glorious force 5? But it doesn’t work like that. Increased wind speed is not proportional to the pressure it produces. It’s an exponential graph. For example although the wind speed of a force 6 is only 12 times that of a force 1, it produces 216 times more pressure. A force 6 actually produces twice as much pressure as a force 5. So for the windsurfer, force 6 does mark a kind of frontier – it’s the start of true strong wind sailing, where board and rig begin to behave differently, where there are extra trim and balance challenges, where the tempo and intensity suddenly increase.
For many there’s a mental struggle. They’re fatally attracted to extreme winds, because that’s what windsurfers have always done and a board and rig is the best craft ever invented with which to confront them. But they’re intimidating. They evoke thoughts of churning oceans, shipwrecks and death at sea. Fears, both real and imagined induce a defensive state of mind and return you to frightened beginner status. For fee-paying adults, there might also be a sense of irresponsibility as they imagine the headline in the local paper. “Top Doctor Rescued in Windsurfing Storm Lunacy.”
I’m not here to encourage you to go out in crazy winds. But like Everest, they are there. The trick is to understand what the challenge really involves.
THE PIE
The windsurfing pie is made up of 6 slices – the technique, the tactics, the physical, the psychological, the tactical, and the kit. The slices vary in size and importance according to the discipline. People see wild-wind sailing as primarily a physical struggle. It’s not, or if it is, you’re doing something wrong. (A 10.5 sq m rig in 12 knots puts a lot more strain through your body than a 3.8 in 35 knots.) Success comes from paying attention to all the slices. Change your mindset, it’s NOT crisis management, it’s just another discipline.
Let us start with the mental.
‘DIFFICULTY’ IS IN THE MIND
In windsurfing’s earliest days, wind strength was our barometer. The bigger the wind you went out in, the better you were – or, at least, were perceived to be. Actually it was difficult. The kit fought you every inch of the way so to survive you had to be strong, nimble and manically determined.
The sands have shifted and today you can argue that the best are judged on how little wind they need to perform. The recreational windsurfer is bedazzled to learn that the freestyler busting out aerial tricks in front of him was using a 4.7 when they themselves were barely planing on a 7.5.
Imagine this. Two windsurfers, one who is a resident of Tarifa (the windiest spot in Europe) and the other, who lives on the muddy banks of the famously sheltered ‘Gustington’ Reservoir, do a house swap. Who is going to make the better transition? Probably the latter.
In places with a strong wind culture – such as Tarifa, The Gorge, Pozo – even part-time sailors very quickly dial-in. In Tarifa, especially in the early days, the biggest sail in a local’s quiver would be a 5.0 and they’d only use that under duress. Anything over 4.0 was seen as heavy and unwieldy.
With the right kit, it’s not so difficult to sail in a gale. We’ll identify some technical issues later, but blessed with loads of reserve power, the classic hurdles of waterstarting, getting planing and staying upwind are a doddle. You just have to change the tempo. Eduardo moving to the resy, on the other hand, has a technical mountain to climb. It’s a special day there when someone changes down to a 9.0 …
It’s harder, more tiring and more technically demanding to create power than to control it. The bigger board, perhaps with a dagger, the monster rig, the flicky wind. The wider the range of variables, the greater the chance of sailing badly.
So the first mindset to change is that sailing in crazy winds is technically difficult. It isn’t – but it’s still a bit scary and potentially dangerous.
Downwind bottom turning in 35 knots is a mission. You gather so much speed, it’s hard not to outrun the wave. Sheeting in and cranking to keep it tight is the only option – and however deep think you’re bending the knees, go down another yard! Photo Aaron White
JOHN CARTER – PHOTOGRAPHER AND STORM-CHASER
I’ve chased around quite a few big storms over the years. The biggest was the storm chase in Ireland earlier this year where the wind was gusting over 80 knots in the morning. At that strength it was almost unsailable, but the idea was to see how far the riders could challenge Mother Nature? My observation was, that most of the time, in extreme conditions the sailing naturally becomes more about survival than massive jumps, as you might expect. Anything over 40 knots and most sailors have the sense enough to preserve themselves rather than go Superhero and launch into an 80-foot-high stalled forward. For me, Koester and Campello seem to be the most controlled high-wind sailors with the ability to raise their game when the going gets tough. I’m not sure what it is about Koester, but he can go higher than other riders in the same wind strength. I guess practice makes perfect and he gets a lot of warm-up for such days living on Gran Canaria?
We just went up to Thurso (Scotland) last week, where one morning it was easily 40 knots. Timo [Mullen], Ross [Williams]and Jamie Hancock were all up for it and sailed on 3.7s no problem. The water is far more choppy and the name of the game is to hunt down shelter from the rough seas and find those little nooks and crannies where the waves wrap in and clean up.
One of the windiest places in the UK always seems to be the Solent where the winds accelerate through past the Needles with 100-knot gusts often recorded. I’ll be keeping my eye out for the next big storm, especially the days afterwards when the real swell associated often arrives. A good measure that I’m on to the right forecast is usually when the ferries are not running, which is a whole other story …
THE SAFETY ISSUE
It would be idiotic to suggest that there isn’t an increased risk of injury and misadventure as the winds top gale-force. Catapults are more likely and more violent. Hence many favour a helmet and/or an impact vest. Things happen so much more quickly. A wind shift, which in a breeze does nothing more calamitous than make the sail flap a little, in a gale can back the sail and drive the boom into your mouth.
If you let the board and rig go to adjust your under-gusset, a 35-knot gust has the guts to lift the lot from the water and send them tumbling away faster and further than you can swim, which has dire implications if you are injured, in an offshore wind (why by the way?) or in a rip. Try and keep hold of something at all times. It’s impossible to even scratch the surface of potential mishaps. For the most part it’s self-regulating. It’s like driving in Rome. You expect trouble around every corner and so are in a state of high alert and arousal.
Common sense is your most potent weapon. You must have an exit strategy. Understand that in a case of breakage, stowing the rig and paddling is incredibly difficult (it’s hard enough on a huge board on a lake in a force 1) and that the only real option is to stay with it and be blown in. The closer you are to shore, the better your prospects. If the wind is blowing you out, they are not good at all.
The difficulty of trying to tack and gybe, persuades many to delay the turn and sail out way too far. If there are breaking waves around, stay within reach of them for they are the fastest bus home, however counter-intuitive that may feel.
But, strange as it may be to relate to, on the water is often the safest place to be. Most of the accidents I’ve witnessed in gales happened with feet on the ground – tweaking a rope in the shallows and getting on the wrong side of the rig as it flips over. Being taken out by an unsecured board cartwheeling down the beach or just trying to get the stuff off the roof and to the water’s edge can be incredibly hazardous. Two people are far better than one. Dave Hackford, Olympian and many times National Champ in the 80s and 90s, had this to say about land based violence:
“I was on the beach in a proper gale when a sailor (I won’t say who) moved my stack of rigs to get at his and one of mine went airborne.” It walloped Clare Seeger in the back, broke her neck and she sued me! But is was all fine – Clare and I never fell out over it.” And I’m happy to relate, Clare is now healthy, happy and living in Hawaii – as far away from Dave’s rigs as possible.
JOHN SKYE
“Sailing Pozo is very different from sailing a real storm. I remember the first time I spent a summer in Pozo and really got used to 3.3 and 3.7 conditions. That autumn we had an event on the Isle Of Wight and it was nuking. I was so excited, really looking forward to transferring my amazing new high-wind skills to my preferred starboard tack. What I got however was a rude awakening as a mid-air gust ripped apart my pushloop and sent me crashing down onto my gear! The problem with a real low-pressure wind is that the gusts seem to come from every different direction, including straight down sometimes. Pozo on the other hand, despite being super windy, is a forgiving high pressure wind. It makes sailing a 3.3 like sailing a 4.3 in the cold winds.
“After a tip from Nik Baker, I rig my sails with less down and outhaul to power up the head more and pin the board to the water. Also with more fullness in the sail I actually have some power to keep me going through the lulls and I lost a lot of the twitchy feeling that I always had with tiny sails. Finally, a slightly longer fin helped keep the board attached the water.
“In terms of sailing, I think it’s really important to attack strong winds. There is a temptation to go slow, try to jump low and all that happens is the wind punishes you. Instead I sail around normally at half throttle, but when I want to do something, whether it be a gybe, jump, double, or anything, I sheet in and try to go as fast as possible. Speed takes all the power out of the sail and you go with the wind, rather than against it. Riding is the hardest and for me, I try to shorten the bottom turn and do sharp tight turns more on the back foot. Holding speed is normally easy, so no need for a fast drawn-out bottom turn. Just slam it and don’t let the sail power up too much.”
KIT CHOICE
At a glance you can spot those whose one thought is to just survive – and those wearing a devilish grin who are set up to exploit the wild forces in a wholly positive way.
It’s fundamentally a kit issue. The survivor is making do with their regular kit – their only concession to the storm being an old 4.0 they picked up for a snip on eBay. They look like a yacht caught out in a tempest, reefed right down, a tiny sail hanging between almost bare poles, rocking from side-to-side with little control, just being blown along. Everything is big apart from that sail, which is actually too small for the board and the mast, yet doesn’t produce enough power to hold the board on the water and is too much for the sailor to handle. It’s a hotchpotch of mismatches.
High wind Harry on the other hand, doesn’t just want to survive, he wants to do all the things he does in easy winds and more. He can’t do that if he’s fighting the kit. So everything is small and in proportion. In a place like Pozo in Gran Canaria, where they expect big winds, from a distance it doesn’t look windy because everyone is sailing normally (if you can call 50 ft in the air ‘normal’) and in control.
To a large extent it’s a cash issue. How much is it worth investing for a bi-annual event? That’s your call, but lets outline the priorities.
“ YOUR STRUGGLE ON THE WATER IS PROPORTIONAL TO THE AMOUNT OF BARE MAST STICKING ABOVE THE SAIL”
THE RIG – IT HAS TO BREATHE!
It’s the same for 10 knots as it is for 40. To windsurf well, you have to resist and distribute the power from the rig to the board in as calm and controlled a way as possible. If that power from the rig arrives like an intermittent volley of cannonballs, you’ll be slightly less relaxed than that cat on its hot tin roof.
The commonest adjective used to describe small sails is ‘twitchy.’ They work in a much narrower wind band than big sails. They’re right on or they’re right off. The booms are shorter so they have a smaller sheeting angle, a narrower power band. I.e., it’s easy to over and under sheet. To a large extent it’s the nature of the beast, but through smart rigging your first job is to ‘de-twitch’ them.
GET A SMALL POLE!
Your struggle on the water is proportional to the amount of bare mast sticking above the sail. Bigger sails are easier to handle because they have sufficient area to make the top of the mast bend, whereupon the leech opens to soften the gusts and the sail self trims. Set a 3.5 – on say a 430cm mast – and not only is the mast way too stiff, but the sail’s setting on the stiffest section of it (the bottom). In a gust, the mast deflects not a millimetre. The sail traps the wind but the leech can’t open to release it. You have to deal with a mammoth power shock, which you can’t help but transfer into the board. Delivering shock loads through the feet is the best way to make the board explode. If you had the loot to make just one high-wind investment, buy the softest recommended mast for your smallest sail.
The good news is that if you ignore the antiques on eBay and go modern, you’ll discover that wave sails in particular now set on much shorter masts. There is brand variance obviously, but a 370 can work on sails from 3.5 right up to 4.7. You’ll get a lot of use out it. Yes the true storm riders match sails as small as 2.8 (check out Rob Jones in Kerry) on 300 masts, but 370 is already a lot better than 460.
RIG FULL!
I discovered the following tip in the middle of a manic speed run and it’s since been echoed by every pro I know. In 35 knots + at the first Production Board Speed Worlds, I was having a ‘mare trying to keep the boxy 100L slalom board (that’s ‘boxy’ with a ‘p’) on the water with a 4.7 – my smallest speed sail - spinning out, tail-walking, tripping … I catapulted at the end of one run, the force of which made the downhaul slip through the cleat about an inch.
Immediately and unexpectedly I regained some sort of control. With some shape back in it, the sail pulled from a certain spot and had the guts to push the board onto the water. Feeling out of control, the first instinct is to flatten the sail right off and it’s the wrong one.
Lack of control comes not so much from the amount of power, but the nature of it. The wind seems to bounce off a flat sail and you get lots of shake and rattle (and even a bit of roll), which you can mistake for being over-powered, but no drive.
So leave some shape in it. Absolutely do not try to set it with a lot of pre-twist. All you’ll do is make it twitchier.
Dave White declares in all honesty that big men have no advantage in crazy winds. “Small sails work so inefficiently that everyone is pretty much on the same size. So you’re better off being small and nimble. In the St Jude storm I had to take out a big 92-litre board just to get through the lulls by the shorebreak inshore. And that was definitely not an advantage. It was 40 knots on the outside.”
DAVE WHITE: SOMETIME SPEED SAILOR – AND SOMETHING OF A STORM SPECIALIST
“Rig like you normally do. If you pull the crap out of your small sail, not only will it not work but you’ve also just done your brain in by telling yourself it’s going to be a struggle. Instead you want to be saying: “ I’ve got right sail for the conditions and I’m going to get the most out of it by rigging it properly.”
BOARDS
Take a 120L freeride (preferably not actually). Every feature of that design, the width, straight rocker, hard-release edges and deep, powerful fin are about creating early lift, which is exactly what you don’t need in a storm. Preferably you want something with ‘wave’ somewhere in the title – and that’s most of them under 100L.
At a strong-wind venue, say Pozo again, given 35 knots, everyone from 100kg Dunkerbeck to a much lighter Daida Moreno, will be on boards less than 75 ltr – it’s a windage issue.
‘Windage,’ which starts to happen around force 6, is where the wind has the force to get under the board and lift it from the water – great if you’re going for monster jumps, not so good if you’re just trying to sail along. The bigger the board the more the wind has to aim at.
But given a red bank account, you’re forced to go with what you’re got. Here’s what you can to help. Inboard straps. Given the choice, mount the front straps right inboard (and forward) and use a single back strap. The aim is to stand over the board as much as possible to hold it down, NOT hike outboard and drive against the rails. Inboard straps also reduce the risk of your heels smacking a chop, which is the number one cause of catapults.
Mastfoot. Try it at the front to hold the nose down. Smaller fin (but not TOO small). Yes dropping fin size will reduce lift but if you go too small, the board just stops working. Boards of a certain tail width demand a minimum fin size without which the board won’t level out and will slide off into a terminal spinout. Yes I know freestylers can sail with a toothpick for a fin, but you wont see them using that set-up in 40 knots. There’s so much air and foam around the surface that a little extra depth to the fin can help you hold grip. Hence given a proper storm, I’d favour my old pintail single fin over a skitty quad – but I’m probably just showing my age.
THE TECHNIQUE CHALLENGE
Recall your first windsurfing steps. Your world finished 3 feet in front of you. You were reactive. Everything was a surprise. Something pulled and you heaved back harder. You didn’t relate the task to your equipment or the vagaries of the environment. But as you got better, your lifted your head both literally and metaphorically. You took in the big picture, started to read the wind and then predict rather than just react to changes in pressure. As you got better still, your sensitised fingers, hips and feet informed you how you could change the set-up to produce a more fluid power distribution.
That’s pretty much the transition that needs to happen as you challenge the storms.
You have to change from a contestant in an unequal tug-o-war contest, back to smart windsurfer.
So what if anything has to change?
First understand that ‘comfort’ is a relative term and that you’re never going to be comfortable in a ‘sitting down against a 7.5 in a sea breeze’ sort of way. There’s just too much going on. But you can be secure and you can learn to relax.
It’s a time for high jumps but you have to get super compact. Once you start going for tweaks and kicking the board out, you give the wind too much to aim at. This one didn’t end well. Photo Aaron White
COMMIT TO THE HARNESS
First time high-winders always complain how they keep hooking out by mistake. It’s because they jerk against every gust with their arms – knackering and unnecessary. To relax in wild winds you have to commit to the harness. Imagine a fish scales by the hook. As you hook in you want to see the needle swing to maximum and stay there. If it’s pinging back and forward, you’re on and off the power and the board will be deeply disturbed by pulses of power. Understand that with so much power around, your controls are highly sensitised. Every move you make, a pull on the boom, a flick of the toe, will be met by an immediate and often violent change of trim. As you start to rely on the harness, begin to relax the arms, and everything else.
Free of ‘fight-or-flight’ adrenalin, you’re less likely to make jerky, over-reactive movements.
GET COMPACT
You make yourself a harder object to knock over by taking up a more compact stance. But that doesn’t mean crouching like a hobbit, shoulders forward, backside two feet under water. Just lower your boom, take up your normal stance but just bend the knees a little. Assuming you’re on a board, which is a little too big, imagine you’ve got the better of a thug and you’re sitting on him until the police arrive. If you release the pressure for a moment, he’ll leap up and thump you.
As you sail, think about plastering the board to the water through constant downward pressure both through feet and mastfoot, but especially though the mastfoot. Pull down through the front hand so, even if you’re sheeted out, your weight alone can keep the nose down.
When it’s crazy, in a way you need to sail deliberately badly, riding windward edge a little down to minimise the lift from the fin and to prevent air getting under the board.
This is a tough call for freeriders, but resist hoofing against the fin. Sudden back foot pressure either causes the nose to fly up or the tail to break out. It’s true of all windsurfing, but especially true in a gale that you have to control the nose.
Be more even-footed – if anything more front foot than back. It’s good practice for wave sailing.
POWER CONTROL
As Skyeboy mentioned, if the seas and wind are wild, you throttle back and only speed up as you go for a move. Sailing slightly sheeted out is a key skill. Head up, lean forward, pull in the front hand and feather the sail slightly. The best way to control power is through heading-up. Staying upwind in a gale should never be a problem. It’s bearing away you have to be scared of.
TACTICS
In a good ol’ UK gale, wind speed varies enormously. 40, down to 20 back up to 35 knots etc.
Play your game according to the gusts, heading up in the big ones, bearing away and looking to do your transitions when it backs off. Little kit makes you very vulnerable to proper lulls. In big seas there are plenty – notably in the lee of swells. You get adept at staying high on the swells in
clear wind.
Away from the mountainous seas, chop is the biggest enemy doing its best to grab a heel and trip you up. Anticipation is your only weapon. Look ahead and weave a clean path.
TURNING
When it comes to wild winds on the open sea or in waves, the general rule is: long arc bad, short arc good, whether it’s on a wave face or in the form of a gybe. The longer you spend downwind, the more speed you pick up and the greater the chance of getting worked by the rig or exploding into lump of chop.
The only way to control a storm gybe is dump all the power before you bear away by massively over-sheeting. And the only way to do that is move your back hand not just down the boom but ALL the way back – almost to the clew. Then you have the leverage to close the sail.
And as for jumps – conditions are PERFECT!
Harty continues to deliver his technique Masterclass next month. To find out about his life-changing clinics for 2014 clinic check out www.peter-hart.com . You can email for his newsletter on harty@peter-hart.com and get updates by liking his Peter Hart Masterclass Facebook page.