faith breakthrough

Above clip from Sam Ireland's "Pro Secrets" video"

there are breakthrough periods for any athlete. for windsurfing, sailing away without falling is a breakthrough. planing for the first time is a breakthrough. full planing gybes are another...

when one first learns to windsurf, there comes a time where one needs to take a leap of faith and lean over the water in order to apply enough leverage to accelerate and plane away. i remember in the early 80's reading a wonderful book on how to windsurf that had pictures of ken winner windsurfing throughout. there was a particular passage in the book where it instructed you to de-power the sail in order to fall towards the water, then sheet in and have the sail act as a parachute to catch you before falling in. it was a non-intuitive move that took faith that the sail really would act as a parachute and save you from getting wet. i remember reading the passage over and over again thinking that this was a very cool concept and totally foreign from other dinghy or multihull sailing i'd done earlier in my life. i remember doing it for the first time on a windsurfer and fearing that i'd plop right into the water. the first time i pulled off this move, i giggled and felt a surge of achievement that i'd done something special, something important, something unique...a breakthrough.

my last session i gybed 180 times...170 gybes were full planing gybes...relaxed full planing gybes...this was a breakthrough. i've always seen the pro's gybe effortlessly and wished i could gybe that way too...but i lacked faith...faith that i would fall into the water. faith that the sail and wind would not prevent me from falling in. the exact same faith i lacked when i was first learning to windsurf.

wojtek, in sam ireland's pro-secrets DVD, says it takes more energy to do a slow gybe than it does to do an aggressive fast full planing gybe. wojtek is an amazing sailor so i did not really know how to interpret what he said. was this really for real? or does this only apply to sailors at the same level as wojtek? does it really take less energy to do a fast gybe than a slow gybe? that, on many levels, makes no sense. no sense until you actually do it.

i usually sail for about an hour...and get pretty pooped after about 20 mins and then need to take a break...full planing gybes actually allowed me to sail for 90 mins flat out, gybing every thirty seconds...that's a break through...