How much power for darkslide?

[bnthere]

sort of sounds like you are losing a lot of energy really early on, like instead of cutting/riding the board up into the wind really far with most of your body following, and then rolling onto the top of the tail with minimum loss of contact with the water, you might be just edging along like normal and popping (and getting pulled toward the kite a bit and loosing energy) and trying to land on the backside of the tail and then get pulled by the loop.

you can get onto the back of the tail before beginning the loop, and keep good line tension and power by trying to ride and extend the lower half of your body way up wind and then rolling the board over quick and then sending the kite around.

if you wait for your kite to be overhead before you start you are missing half the slide, you can lay into it with the kite on the side and slide it as it climbs the edge of the wind and overhead.

the more lit you are the easier these are to slide, but watch out for getting launched at the end