How to gybe a skimboard?

[Chriskef]

Having fun on my Nobile skimboard but finding it really difficult to move my feet to gybe. As soon as I move my front foot, the board takes off from under my feet.

Any gybing and jumping tips/advice really appreciated.

I gotta say, if you feel you've hit a peak with kitesurfing, then skimboards will bring a whole new challenge - like learning all over again.

[FredMurphy]

I fould body varials (just "jump" and swap your feet) and shuvits were easier. Look cooler too.

[gdorfman]

This is a good question. It seems like most people just ride it backwards (slow if you have decent nose rocker) or spin it around. I wanted to learn a gybe style that I could do in any condition (not just flat water). This took me a surprisingly long time. I actually postponed learning it pretty early because it seemed like a frustrating thing to learn until you are good on a skim. The fact is that you can have a ton of fun on a skim and get good without doing this—just flipping it manually, or riding toeside. You can do what you want, but I think it’s a lot more fun just to get good at riding a skim in all conditions instead of killing yourself over the gybe at first. I have noticed that people with good windsurf backgrounds pick this up really easily.

Couple things:

Your fins on the nobile probably make it much easier—make sure to use them at first. I only learned to gybe a skim after I learned to gybe a surfboard, which is much easier because it’s stable and tracks through a turn. If you have access to a surfboard, maybe try that first.

You need to have wax or traction where your old rear foot sets down temporarily during the gybe. The nobile seems to lack this. Easy to add it.

Flat kite made it way easier. That, surfboard experience, and finally committing to add traction in the right spot is what made it click for me.

This is what works for me: bear off and bring the kite basically overhead as you turn it—depower so you don’t get pulled off. Board is now downwind. Bring back foot to the middle of the board, facing forward (foot parallel with rail). It’s a couple inches from rail, and in between where your feet normally are. You can kind of use it to carve the board like that—the board is largely flat—not totally on edge. Now bring front foot back very fast to the rear pad. This is the key part. Once you get it down on the rear pad, you kind of shove the board through the turn (because it doesn’t really track well without fins.) then move the front foot forward to the normal pad. You are just planning all the time, but not going fast or anything. You are on the verge of not planning at the end. To do with speed would be a lot harder without fins. A surfboard or directional makes it a lot easier to carve with some speed.

So, some people talk about gybing before you turn the kite, others do it after, but what worked for me was doing it basically at the same time, with the board not on edge. I’m still probably only 60-70% on this—I think falling is a mental thing with it.

The ideal transition I want to learn is the hop where you just change your feet in the air and continue on. Mark shinn makes it look really easy, but it’s pretty weird when you are powered up edging. I think that’s best, because then you can crank a carve to turn. Anyways, that’s what worked for me. But I recommend that if you don’t figure this out fast, then just work on getting better overall skim fundamentals, and it will come to you later. Don’t obsess over it.