After putting it off for ages I've decided to have a go at gybing too. I mean, how hard can it be? No don't answer that

The plan is to have a go whenever there's enough wind to get planing without being totally overpowered.

I'm quite tempted to do a guru week this year, but if I wait til summer I'd hope that I'd at least be doing the planing entry, non-planing exit gybe.

Phill, your south coast thing sounds interesting, I may well be up for that so please keep us informed

I'd be interested in the South Coast gybe thing as well, as long as it fell at weekends (and once it's warmed up a little).

Excellent stuff. The more the merrier.

We'll all be able to comment on each others skills watching the video afterwards.

We've spoken to Peter Hart and FC Watersports about some tuition. Both are happy to run clinics for us so there is no excuse not to improve by summer.

I would love to join in but am a little concerned that the venue for this teach-in will not be as restrictive at Brog.

I often feel like I'm trying to turn an oil tanker and just as I'm getting round I run out of lake.

P.S. I don't like the sound of you lot "analyzing" my moves.

Thanks for the help. So far I have discovered that the only guru options at suitable times for me are Jem Hall at El Tur on 5 April (but he is fully booked) or 2 days with Simon or Peter at Hayling or West Wittering in late April.

I'd rather have more than 2 days so I'm now thinking about a week in Dahab or El Tur in February or March. From the various websites, Club Dahab (run by Club Vass) seem to be the easiest to book a package including tuition (others are a bit vague). Has anyone been with them? Is there anywhere else that anyone would recommend for the tuition?

Alistair

There are features in the GPS software packages (GPSAR Pro, GPSResults and RealSpeed) that allow you to measure your gybe performance.

GPSAR Pro has a gybe analysis tool which gives you stats on them (entry speed, exit speed, min. speed, max. speed, distance, etc) and scores each gybe using a formula of min. speed / entry speed (displaying score as a percentage).

All the packages also have a category called alpha racing. For that you sail a 500m coarse but somewhere within that 500m you have to do a gybe and return to within 50m of your original path. I believe that the current record is 27.316 knots (over 30mph). Rather impressive!

It would be interesting to run a Thursday Slalom track through the software and see our alpha results. Talking of which, GPSAR Pro allows you to play back multiple tracks simultaenously. I was watching myself and Tim sailing around the lake (session from last Sunday) and it would be most entertaining after our races.