Rooms for Hatteras camps

Jeff (Graham's dad, a really nice guy) just contacted me about a room for the Hatteras camp in October. Is anyone who is planning to go to one of the Hatteras camps has a free room that Jeff could rent? Or perhaps you are thinking of going, but also need a room, so you could join up with Jeff and maybe others to rent a house?

Loop lecture videos

Here are some loop lecture videos from the ABK Camp Hyannis, September 2010:

1. Introduction (~8 min). Andy briefly explains the fundamentals - that the loop is horizontal, not vertical, and the importance of sail steering. He also discusses the drawbacks of some common loop pre-exercises and recommendations.
   
   
2. Crash #1: sail steering while falling (4 min). The objective of this non-planing crash is to learn to use the sail to steer the nose of the board downwind while falling.
   
   
3. Crash #2: falling off the bike (10 min). Similar to the first crash, but in planing conditions. One important thing to learn here to is fall to the outside (explained with a bike riding example).
   
   
4. Crash #3: tails up out of the pool (7 min). This crash adds timing and using the rig to "jump out of the pool" to get the tail of the board up high, with the nose down.
   
   
5. From crash #3 to the loop: add a wave, think big-small-big. Doing crash #3 of the back of a wave with a big trough behind it should get you through the first loop. Not much time to think during the loop - but "get big for takeoff, small for the rotation, big for landing" might just fit.
   
   

I love this loop lecture - it has a very logical, easy-to-understand progression of steps & skills to learn. It has a number of "little" things that make this, in my opinion, the safest approach to looping. One example is the "pull the clew over your head, while pushing down with the mast hand". Together with sinking the tail, this should reduce the change of any involuntary catapults (which I still had when trying to follow Remko's steps) to almost zero. I think that over time, this lecture will increase the number of windsurfers try to learn to loop, and who eventually learn it without getting injured in the process, by quite a bit. Hope to see you do some loops or loops crashes on the water next time!

The videos are "unlisted" on YouTube, meaning they cannot be found by searches. Please do not post links to this blog or any of the videos on the web, in blogs, on FaceBook, or similar - they are only intended for windsurfers who have been to ABK camps.

iPhone tricks

Some of you have seen me staring at my iPhone to watch Tricktionary videos for the tricks I am working on. Greg just reminded me that I had promised to put instructions how to copy tricks onto your iPhone or iPod. I have put the instructions on my personal blog, since they might be of interest to those poor windsurfers who have never taken an ABK camp. They are at:
http://boardsurfr.blogspot.com/2010/09/tricktionary-on-your-iphone.html

Thanks for the reminder, Greg!

ABK Camp Hyannis 2010

The ABK Camp Hyannis 2010 ended just a couple of days ago. It was once again a great camp, even though we had only one windy day. Seeing how much progress Martin and Graham have made since last year, I decided to practice more light-wind freestyle on my 110l Fanatic Skate from now on, instead of always using bigger boards for light wind.

I recorded a number of lectures, including Andy's new loop lecture, which I love! I plan to upload the lectures as unlisted videos on YouTube, and post links here. Unlisted videos is a feature that YouTube has added sometime this summer, which keeps videos semi-private - you need to know the URL to view the video. One big advantage is that you will not have to download the entire videos before you can watch them. Hopefully, I'll get the first videos posted during the upcoming weekend (unless it is windy, of course). Stay tuned!