Slappysan wrote: ↑Tue Feb 05, 2019 11:17 pm
... I would not call that a duck tack, it's just an upwind carve to toeside. To be a duck tack you need to change your feet.
The term "duck" comes from windsurfing. It comes from ducking under the back of the rig as you do a transition with your back facing the tail of the board. A conventional tack has the rider passing in front of the rig with their back towards the nose of the board.
I find all the tacking instructional videos (including this one) to be somewhat useless. They all say "Do this and this and this. Then rotate and ride away." None provide any useful analysis of the rotation phase. They all follow the "miracle occurs here" school of instruction.
It's great that they tried to make a good video. It's just a little disappointing that it does not properly address the main difficulty in tacking.
The advice to not lean back is good, as far as it goes. But you see Tucker lean way back in every tack. He is centred above the board, but the mast and board are well cranked over.
This is made more confusing when many freeriding videos show riders cranked and carving hard through tacks.
There needs to be analysis of how the board is carved, how you get from carved to upright, how you get to facing the other way, where the kite is at each point in the transition, how to stop the kite pulling you off backwards, and how to deal with each failure point.
The general advice is you need to do 1000 attempts at tacking before you get it. The problem is you end up practicing falling off backwards time and time again.
I am about half way through my 1000 attempts with some entire sessions spent tacking and falling. I am finally pulling off tacks regularly (1-2 per session) but certainly not reliably.
What I think I have learned is so far (all subject to change when I finally work it out)
- the carve and the rotation seem to be separate but linked stages. Carve upwind, pause for an instant and get vertical. Do the rotation. If you carve and rotate in one movement you'll do a 360 (which is fun and much easier than tacking).
- aim for a gentle, vertical rotation. Don't dig in and try to force things around. You'll just fall off backwards and/or do a 360. Don't lean back
Start with slow, vertical attempts.
- a bigger kite seems to be better at holding my weight and stopping me falling.
- push the bar out as the kite comes up to 12:00 and focus on a little back hand pressure. You want the kite to continued towards the new direction so it doesn't pull you off backwards (but not loop until you're ready, unless you're doing a 360) A little flick of the wrist to send the kite up and over your shoulder seems helpful.
This last bit is problematic. Our more tack capable local riders have the kite way behind them before they start the rotation. If I try that I fall off backwards during the transition. The riders cannot explain the process any better than I can.
Another frustrating thing is, I can do pretty much anything I want on a foil. Foot swaps. Gybes of any radius. Landing foiling jumps. Mess around with kite loops and more. All the sorts of things you would expect after hundreds of hours of foiling. Tacks are still a bit of a mystery. It seems that applies to many other people with this topic still coming up and still getting the same sorts of answers.