This kite foiling tutorial explains jibes in detail.
A jibe is a change of direction initiated by turning downwind.
We start by looking at heelside to toeside jibes.
This is specifically a light wind jibe.
The technique changes with wind speed, which is explained later.
Ride at a medium to low speed.
Steer the kite back quite firmly before turning the foil.
Once the kite starts to head in the new direction, carve the board downwind.
To turn the board, you twist your hips to push the front foot forwards and back foot behind.
At the same time, you lean slightly over your toes to
bank the board and push yourself around the turn.
As the kite crosses the middle of the window, you should be riding fully downwind.
You then turn your foil crosswind, quite quickly, before the kite looses power.
Let’s review that light wind jibe.
Don’t ride in too fast.
Steer the kite first, with the back hand, then turn the board.
Twist your hips and lean gently over your toes to turn the board.
Ride downwind as the kite crosses the middle of the window,
and then turn crosswind before the kite looses power.
Let’s look at the kite control for the basic light-wind jibe.
The kite starts around 45 degrees.
You steer with the back hand until the kite pivots and starts moving in the new direction.
Depower to help the kite pick up speed in light wind.
You should then ride downwind as the kite crosses the middle of the window,
and then crosswind before the kite reaches the edge of the window.
Bring the bar back in as you feel the kite’s power drop.
It’s important to understand that foil jibe technique changes with wind speed.
The differences in technique are mostly down to managing apparent wind.
In light wind you will easily be riding much faster than the true wind.
If you carry that speed and turn downwind,
you will notice line tension drops, and then your lines become slack.
In light wind the further and faster you head downwind the more slack your lines will have.
Because you can easily loose line tension once you start jibbing downwind,
it really helps to steer the kite first in light wind.
That way you can make sure your kite turns quickly, even in light wind.
And once the kite has turned it can start picking up momentum in the new direction.
Then, even if you do ride a little too far downwind and make the lines become slack,
the kite will recover quickly because of the momentum it has in the new direction.
On the other hand, let’s look what happens if you try to jibe
before steering the kite in light wind.
Because the rider has turned downwind first,
they now have no apparent wind on the kite, and cannot steer the kite.
To avoid slack lines completely, you can jibe at lower speeds and do a tighter turn.
This works because it reduces the distance travelled downwind.
Things change in strong wind.
In strong wind you actually want to reduce the apparent wind on purpose.
For example, in strong wind, if you steer the kite first before jibbing, the kite will shoot
across the window and pull hard downwind, while your foil is still carrying your body crosswind.
Because you haven’t reduced apparent wind you get a large kick from the kite.
To prevent this kick, in strong wind, you first turn the board downwind,
and the apparent wind drops rapidly.
You can then steer the kite freely across the window.
It will steer quickly, but the pull will be smooth.
The stronger the wind, the faster you want
to be moving downwind as the kite crosses the middle of the window.
You can also keep the kite higher and steer more gently to reduce your acceleration in strong wind.
In summary:
In light wind, steer first and do a slow tight jibe.
In strong wind, get moving downwind first and then steer the kite.
The stronger the wind the faster you want to ride downwind.
In medium wind, you do something in between.
Typically you steer the kite and jibe at the same time.
And do a moderate size downwind carve.
The toe to heelside jibe uses the same principles covered so far.
Let’s look at a light wind toe to heel jibe.
Ride at medium to low speed.
Steer the kite first to make sure it turns.
Carve the board around.
Twisting your hips to turn the nose.
And leaning gradually onto your heels to bank the board.
As the kite crosses the window, depower at the bar and head briefly downwind.
As the kite starts to loose power turn crosswind and start pulling in the bar.
Let’s look at that riding the other way.
In strong wind, just like before, you’ll want to turn the foil downwind first,
and ride further downwind to soften the pull of the kite as it crosses the window.
It’s important to understand what turns the foil.
There are 2 main mechanisms.
Your foil can turn through yaw.
Basically, this means that wherever you point the nose of the board,
the mast will make surf the foil travels that way.
You should practice yawing the board by riding S curves like this.
You yaw the board simply by twisting your hips
This will push your feet in different directions and turn the nose of the board.
You will notice yawing the board turns it rapidly.
It allows you to guide or direct your board very quickly without too much force on your body.
A foil also turns by banking.
This is when you lean, either towards your toes or your heels, which tilts yourself and the foil.
The wings are now banked and the large forces that the wings generate
are now pushing you into the turn.
Banking the foil takes a little longer but creates far larger forces on your body.
So the more aggressive the turn the more you will need to bank.
It’s easy to make mistakes with your basic foil turning technique.
If you don’t lean enough into the turn, you will fly out during the jibe.
There’s not enough force to push you around the turn.
If you lean too much, on the other hand, you are likely to loose balance.
Also, if you lean too much, your wings will come closer to the surface
and you’re more likely to breach.
This is very easy to do.
From twintip riding you naturally lean very hard to sink in your rail.
Also on a twintip you load the back foot when turning sharply.
On a foil these habits will cause you to climb in the middle of the jibe.
In the middle of the jibe you are loading the foil and the kite is crossing overhead.
So you need to make sure you apply plenty of front foot pressure to avoid breaching.
You can use the following steps when learning to jibe:
Practice S curves until you can quickly and easily direct the foil.
Next, start with taxi jibes or jibes at low speed.
Ideally you should practice these in light to medium wind.
Next, slightly increase riding speed and lean a bit more to complete the jibe smoothly.
As you build confidence, you can then start trying faster jibes in stronger wind.
After jibbing you have various options.
After jibbing into toeside stance, you can stop and switch your feet into heelside stance.
Or you can maintain this toeside stance and simply do another jibe to return to heelside.
Or, you can descend to a taxi and do a taxi footswap.
Or you can do a foiling footswap.
Footswaps are covered in the subsequent tutorials.
Access the foiling playlist for the next steps in your kite foiling journey.
And good luck learning to kite foil.