Hey gang
I have this dream of cruising around up on the foil doing smooth carving turns, zig zagging through swells and other kiters, big smile on my face and the wind in my hair, the only time my board touches the surface is when I water start at the beginning and come in at the end.
Reality, my sessions are a series of left and right tacts with a few turns and pauses in between tacts as I swim back to get my foil after another failed gibe and start again.
I've been foiling for about 18 months now. To be fair I get out once every 2 or 3 weeks but still, Ive been foiling for quite a while in relation to not being able to gibe still!
I'm on a Moses Fluente T60 with the 550 front wing. I use the flysurfer soul 8m and 12m.
On a surfboard I can do gibe turns sweetas with or without a downloop depending on wind strength. Stance swap before or after the turn.
Get on my foil and it all goes to pieces. For the last 6 months I have been stuck in a rut where I can do about 50% surface gibes (touch down) and maybe 1 in every 30 transitions I fluke a gibe up on the foil.
Recently I decided to go strapless cause I kept doing minor ankle and knee twists when stuffing up the gibes. This set me back a bit with water starts but has made the foot work easier during the gibes, though strapless has its disadvantages when the power comes on during the turn if you have no straps to anchor your stance against...
I know there's heaps of useful videos out there that I've watched already. I know it will eventually happen, but seriously, did anyone else struggle this long to get transitions locked in?!
Feeling deflated...