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Mission 5: learn to waterstart
immediately – even before you can
beach start!
Many years ago I had a crazily windy beginners course where
we just couldn’t really sail. So rather than postpone I
suggested we did an experiment and focus solely on deep
waterstarts. Over two days we did rig recovery, flying a rig
without touching the ground and worked on progressively
deeper waterstarts.
Remember these were virtual beginners, yet everyone learnt
to deep waterstart, including one chap who had only done
one hour of windsurfing! So if it is windy, don’t drive home or
rig a tiny sail, find safe shoulder depth water and practice
flying the rig and start your waterstart mission NOW.
It will help your confidence, rig control hugely and surprisingly
speed up your harness and footstrap stage. I promise you,
waterstarting has NOTHING to do with your windsurfing ability,
it’s purely a mechanical action, so don’t put it off, like most
people do. “I wish I’d started to learn waterstarts on day one
as they often only take two days to learn!”
uk
WIND
SURFING