Toe side turn and toe side riding help

[reyrivera]

I am able to complete a toe side turn, but then I lose power when I start riding toe side and flop forward into the water away from the kite. Should I let the kite take me downwind until I get powered up again and then start edging the board? I find it a bit tricky to keep my kite powered up. Too bad I'm starting to figure things out at the end of the season. Thanks for any help in advance.


Rey

[Bulldog]

There are several potential things that are happening:

1) You are overflying the kite past the outside of the window. Make sure your board follows your kite the entire way through the turn. The faster you fly the kite, the faster you have to turn.

2) You are underpowered (easy to imagine this time of year). Just because you have enough power to initiate the turn doesn't mean you have enough to stay on plane once the turn ends. Riding toeside sucks more of the kite's power than heelside, especially if you don't come out of the turn fast enough.

In general, you will find that the faster you can do a toeside turn, the more power you will have when you finish and that power will help you get on plane toeside. It may be that you have a kite that flies very fast across the window and you just haven't developed the turning skills to keep up with it, so it gets beyond you. In that case, try to slow the kite down a bit.

[jono]

Rey:

I too can't go toe-side real well (blind leading blind), but this is what I found:

Turn toe-side and don't try to point upwind right away -- point down more than you think you need to. You are probably doing a slower turn into toe-side and the kite is getting ahead of you.

Just like when you learned to go upwind heel-side, you can't point upwind right after you turn. Get some speed up by pointing a bit downwind first. Also, it might be hard, but sheet in for power and sine the kite to get power right after your turn. This helped me a lot.

Once toe-side, push your hips forward and make sure you aren't bent at the waist.

To practice, you might do slalom turns (toe-side/heel-side back and forth) without sending the kite across the window. Do it deeper and deeper into the turn. This will get you more confident doing the turn into toe-side which I think is most of the problem when first learning.

[reyrivera]

Thanks for the tips. Hopefully, I can try them out on the next storm session this winter.

Rey

[stomptricks]

Hey there,

We've compiled a nice list of tutorial videos on riding Toeside at Stomptricks.com

click here for more: http://stomptricks.com/tricks/ride-toeside/