This guide explains the heelside to toeside tack in detail.
Let’s begin with a walkthrough of the trick.
Ride with medium speed.
Lean your weight back slightly, to ride upwind.
You begin the tack by steering and depowering the wing.
Raise your front hand, and try to reach it behind your back ...
to send the wing beyond the heelside of the board.
As you do this, push away with the back hand to help the wing steer.
Then release the back hand early as you need the wing depowered to ride fully upwind.
As your front arm reaches towards heelside you should carve upwind easily.
Once you ride fully upwind, twist your upper body into the turn.
This will tighten your turn and help you face the wing.
You can now place the new front hand.
Then you can place the new back hand.
To exit the tack you need to roll into a toeside lean.
Lunge your knees and shoulders towards toeside.
Try to apply pressure to your toes.
As the board rolls into a toeside lean, and the nose turns away from upwind,
you should be able to pick up speed in the new direction.
Let’s look at that riding the other way.
Slight upwind course. Medium speed.
Move the front hand up and extend it back beyond the heelside edge.
Flick the back hand away to help the wing steer.
Then release the back hand to depower the wing.
With your front hand reaching behind your back you should carve upwind sharply.
Next, twist your shoulders into the turn.
As you turn you will face the strut or boom and you can easily place the new front hand.
Then place the new back hand.
Lean your knees and shoulders towards toeside to roll the board into a toeside lean.
The way you control the wing is crucial to tacking.
Your front hand must guide the wing up and start steering it behind your back.
You want to keep your front hand fairly high, at least shoulder height.
You want your front hand reaching more towards the nose of the board than the tail.
You use the back hand to help the wing steer,
as it’s important to guide the wing across to heelside quickly.
Once the wing is on its way towards heelside, it’s important to release the back hand to depower.
Any mistake with this technique can spoil your tack.
You can massively slow down your tack, if your steering of the wing is slow or weak.
With sluggish wing steering, the wing stays nearer toeside
and it stays inclined or tilted towards toeside.
In this position, the wing’s drag is twisting you in the wrong direction, halting your turn.
By contrast, firm wing steering will get you around the tack in less time.
Getting the wing behind your back, helps you lean towards heelside.
Also, getting the wing behind you, and tilted towards heelside,
means the force on the wing pulls you around the turn more quickly.
And, once you do turn the wing is inclined towards the new direction, ready to help you regain speed.
The path your front hand takes is important.
If you allow your front hand to drop too low,
this can force the wing into a negative angle of attack, known as being backwinded.
If your front arm reaches towards the tail of the board,
even slightly, that can tilt you onto the back foot.
You should try to keep the front hand reaching more towards the
nose of the board as you guide the wing across.
Another common and instinctive mistake is keeping hold of the back hand for too long.
During a tack you have to ride further upwind than is normally possible.
If you keep the wing powered,
then its downwind-acting force will resist your upwind turn.
Having the back hand placed for just a second too long,
will mean you loose the speed required to foil around the tack.
Another key challenge is roll.
How much heelside roll to use initially ...
and how to switch from that heelside roll into the toeside roll required to ride away.
When you first learn to tack using too much heelside roll
is one of the biggest problems you can encounter.
This can cause you to get stuck in heelside.
This can cause you to drop off heelside as you loose speed.
As a beginner, you can greatly improve your
chances by using a minimal amount of heelside lean.
Of course, if you use too little heelside lean, then your turning circle will be so wide,
that you loose foiling speed before you make it around.
Switching from a heelside lean into a toeside lean can be a challenge.
If you are late or gentle leaning towards toeside,
then you won’t get into a toeside lean soon enough.
On the other hand, if you are too aggressive or early leaning towards toeside,
you can roll into a toeside lean too early.
This stops your turn and leaves the board aiming too far upwind to regain speed.
If you have too much heelside lean initially, you’re going to
get stuck with that heelside lean and have no chance of rolling across to a toeside lean.
A common reason that you may get stuck in a heelside lean,
is that when you first depower the wing you are likely to drop back further towards heelside.
Normally you can lean your hips back towards heelside significantly,
since the force of the wing balances your lean.
But, the moment you release your back hand you loose the force on the wing,
and if your hips are still back, you will roll towards heelside rapidly.
If this is what happens to you, then bare in mind that as you depower the wing,
you may need to push your hips forwards.
This stops you leaning too far towards heelside, gets you a bit more upright and helps you balance.
If you’re having issues with changing roll, you may need to consider foot position.
If your feet are slightly closer to heelside than they should be,
you may struggle to get from your heelside lean into a toeside lean.
In that case shifting your overall foot placement
a couple of centimetres closer to toeside will make it much easier.
It can be tempting to pressure the back foot as you tack on a foil.
However, this instinct can make your foil breach.
And, even if you don’t breach, making your board climb will shed a lot of speed.
You exchange speed for height.
And, if you raise the nose while riding upwind,
the wind will push back more on it and slow you down more than it would normally.
So, try to apply enough front foot pressure in order to foil level.
Bare in mind that you have the best chance of tacking if you can foil about half way up.
If you foil too low, you’re likely to clip the water.
If you foil too high, you’re likely to breach the front wing or at least destabilize it.
By now you’ve probably realised that during a tack there’s more going on than meets the eye.
In fact, for most people, if they attempt to tack from scratch
it’s likely to be such a complete failure that they can’t even learn from it.
That’s why I’d recommend using the following training steps
so you can develop your skills in manageable chunks.
Start by practising wing control on land.
Guide the wing up and behind your back.
Turn upwind and around.
Then swap your hand placement.
This must be done quickly and without fumbling.
The next step is to depower the wing and see if you can turn fully upwind before taxiing.
If you can turn fully upwind before taxiing and then you reach the wing
behind your back it should pull you around the remainder of the turn ...
so that you can then swap hands and taxi away.
It’s very likely at this early stage, that you drop off the heelside of the board.
Try to fix this early on, by using either less heelside lean,
or by lunging your hips towards toeside as you depower the wing.
After that, work on foiling a bit further around and see if you can swap hands before taxiiing.
As you develop faster wing control, and build to a medium foiling speed,
it’s then possible to foil around the entire tack.
Generally, at first, you will exit the tack with only just enough speed to foil away.
To regain speed quickly, you then have to point the nose slightly downwind.
For a downwind exit you generally lunge towards toeside more gently,
so that you only roll into that toeside lean once the nose has turned slightly downwind.
As you improve you should find you can exit the tack with plenty of speed,
and that means it’s possible to ride away on an upwind course.
For a fully upwind tack, start with a bit more heelside lean to carve around quickly.
Steer the wing rapidly with the front hand.
As you regain power from the wing, lean towards toeside more firmly,
so that you roll the board into a toeside lean while still aiming upwind.
Thanks for watching and good luck learning the heel toe tack.