Windsurfing Bible

Stance & Harness
Book five of The Windsurfing Bible


Burr Hazen


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Introduction
Necessary Knowledge

Light Wind

In the Beginning
Stance & Steering

Moderate Wind

Beachstart
Fast Tack
Flare Gybe

High Wind

Stance & Footstraps
Waterstart
Carved Gybes
Ski & Laydown Gybes
Duck Gybe
Rigging
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Glossary
Burr Hazen (Bio)
burrze@yahoo.com
Order Information
Windsurfing in moderate wind is a different experience than windsurfing in light-wind!

What’s different?  Speed for starters.  You’re sailing faster than before, so everything seems to happen more quickly, which means there must be less slow thinking and more fast reacting.  Your stance is different too;  you now lean out over the water to counterbalance the sail’s force, which gives moderate-wind sailing a different feel.  Acquiring this feel, and the stance associated with it, is one of the most significant windsurfing accomplishments you will achieve.  Finally, you’re connected to the rig by a line attached to the boom and a girdle-like contraption around your hips, called a harness.

A harness is to windsurfing, what a bed is to sleeping.  You can do both activities without them, but it’s a lot more comfortable with them.   A harness will add hours, days, and years to your windsurfing by taking the strain off your hands and arms.  There’s a certain initiation associated with learning to use a harness, but once it is mastered, you’ll wonder how you ever sailed without one.

Along with the new sailing stance, moderate-wind conditions require a modification in one other skill learned in Part I:  setting-sail.  Let’s deal with this first, then move on to stance, sailing techniques, and the harness.

Setting-sail

There are two methods of setting-sail in moderate-wind.   They’re similar in that both are based on the 3 steps of the light-wind technique described in Book 3.  Which one should you use?  If you just graduated from Part I, work on the first technique, intermediate setting-sail.  If you’ve built up some windsurfing time and confidence, try advanced setting-sail.

End of Excerpt

Table of Contents Book 5

Stance & Harness

Intermediate Setting-sail
Advanced Setting-sail
Moderate-wind Stance
Moderate-wind Sailing
The Gust
The Harness
Hooking-in and -out
What's next?
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Sample Illustrations

Figure 5.10~  Place your hands shoulder width apart (12 inches / 30 cm) and farther back on the boom than in light-wind.  (If your hands are too far forward, all of the sail’s force concentrates on your back hand, which causes the sail to sheet-out.)  And, your front hand is 2 inches (5 cm) closer to the balance point than the back hand.  Therefore, your front arm handles slightly more of the sail’s pull than your back arm, which allows your back hand to more easily adjust the sail trim. Windsurfing Harness Technique
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Figure 5.11~ Note how a triangle forms; the rig is one leg of the triangle, your straight front arm is the second, and your body forms the third.  Keeping this triangle in mind, sail with a straight line from your ankles, through your knees, through your hips, to your shoulders.

 
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wpe2241.TMP.gif (886 bytes)Windsurfing Harness Technique
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Stance & Harness, Book 5 of the Windsurfer's Bible, costs $8.97 (US)  and is available in PDF formats:

PDF format is the universally accepted program for reading documents sent over the internet, but your computer must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is free; link below. 

Download Adobe Acrobat Reader

There are three payment methods.

1)  Credit Card.  Click the following link to use your credit card with ClickBank, the internet's largest and safest processor.

Credit Card Payment

2)  PayPal.  This method is used my 8 million members to transfer money to another e-mail account for things like sending money to their kids in college, settling restaurant tabs with friends, paying for on-line auctions, etc.  Click the following link to use your PayPal Account or to open a new account.

3)  Check.  Send me an e-mail, I will forward to you the mailing address, then I will e-mail the book to you.

Please be aware that you can purchase all 4 books of Part 2, Moderate Wind Sailing and Intermediate Techniques as a single package for $17.97.  If you are interested, click the following link:

Part 2

Thanks and I hope you enjoy the book and find it helpful!


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Created by Burr Hazen.   All rights reserved.   Copyright  ©  1991 - 2010   Burchard M. Hazen, Jr.