Monday 1 December 2008

How To........Flaka


Flaka from Stephen Gibson on Vimeo.

Sail on a broad reach at full velocity.

Spot a piece of chop and, moving onto the balls of your feet, bear away even more and flatten the board off as you hit the chop and pop the board out of the water.

This is the moment when flaka success or failure is decided. As the board leaves the water, you must lean forward towards the nose of the board as far as possible, bending slightly at the waist to get your head above the mastfoot. At this point you must also look upwind over your shoulder to encourage the board to rotate into wind. Also, you should throw the sail as far forward as possible with your front arm straight and your back arm bent in real close to the body, keeping the sail neutral(no pressure in the back hand). Tricky,eh? There is alot going on in this first nanosecond but if you can get all these factors to converge in this first moment, the rest is easy.

The nose of the board should stick in the water and spin you backwards. Keep leaning forward with your front arm straight and your back arm bent into the body, and the board will automatically spin itself back onto the original tack.

Flakas can take a bit of time to lear, esoecially for older sailors like myself, as the forward, into-wind movement during the pop is so unnatural.Patience is required..............

1 comment:

  1. I am working on these and struggling. Hopefully I can take something away from your tips.
    Cheers
    Fish

    ReplyDelete




Welcome to the site!
Aswell as regular features and news updates from Fuerte, I am going to be using this site to promote my windsurfing clinics.
After 15 years on the island,having competed in the PWA freestyle world cup and now representing Fanatic Boards and North Sails, I have decided to give something back to the sport which has given me so much over the years.
My aim is to provide clinics "tailor-made"for each individual, with a strong emphasis on practical in-the-water instruction, backed up by on-the-beach tuition and video analysis. The consistent conditions here in Fuerte make learning so much easier and, perhaps equally important, more fun than the typically inconsistent, cold UK - why not come over for a week and improve your windsurfing by a year!!!

I can help with any manoeuvres from carve-gybe through to advanced jumping and freestyle, just email me with your wish list and we'll take it from there! Over the next few months, I am going to be video-chronicling manoeuvres which you can check out on the right in my tricktionary sections. This will give you some idea of the things we can work on, or, if you can't make it over here, you may find them useful to help understand and break down a manoeuvre you would like to learn (hopefully, the slow-mo will help in this respect!).Just click on the trick and scroll down..........
Anyway, keep checking it out as I have loads more in my bag of tricks and will be updating as and when I get the footage.
If you're interested, e-mail me on gibboinfuerte@yahoo.co.uk
See ya in Fuerte?
Stephen.............