How to get planing! Windsurfing Tutorial

Welcome to this step-by-step tutorial on how to get planing. In windsurfing, planing refers to the phenomenon when the windsurf board rises up and glides on top of the water surface rather than cutting through it. This happens when the board reaches a certain speed, allowing it to lift and skim over the water surface with minimal drag, giving the rider a sense of speed and control. All right, let's jump straight into the video. How do you get planing? To get on the plane requires two things. First, the sail has to generate pressure onto the mast foot and the board to have the power to move forward faster and faster and get on the plane. And secondly, our positioning on the board. Where do we put our weight and our body so that the board can glide freely? If you master these two things, you will unlock the key to get on the plane in windsurfing and basically unlock a whole new world within windsurfing and have so much more fun than before when you were not planing. But first things first. Let's talk about the conditions that you need that will make it easier for you to get on the plane. You'll want to look for at least 12 to 15 knots, being on somewhat of bigger equipment. Bigger equipment will make it easier for you to get on the plane compared to small equipment and strong wind. So I would recommend a sail of between 5.5 to maybe 7.5 square meters and a board that is at least 80 centimeters wide and around 130 liters. Of course, this depends on your weight and height, so if you weigh more, just add a few liters and maybe a little bit of sail size. Then you'll want to look for a spot where the wind is relatively consistent and you have somewhat flat water. If it's very wavy, it will make it more difficult to learn how to get planing. First let's understand what planing actually means. Planing means when the board stops displacing the water and instead glides freely over the water. So you're basically skimming over the waves and this feels amazing. So now on to the technique. As I've said before, getting planing is about getting the sail to generate power that translates through the mast base onto the board. So basically the sail is your engine. And to get the maximum power from our engine, we have to sheet in the sail. Sheeting in the sail will generate more power and you will already feel that the board starts moving forward. The sail generates power because the wind is flowing over one side of the sail faster than it is flowing around the other side of the sail. This difference in airflow between the leeward side and the windward side of the sail will create a pressure difference, which is what powers our sail and allows us to move forward. As we close the sail and pull the sail to the back, this difference in airflow increases dramatically and therefore you generate so much more power. This is why we want to close our sail to start getting on the plane. If we just have our sail opened, the airflow difference will not be so big and therefore we don't have enough power to start getting on the plane. You can feel that you are in the correct position if you can feel that you are translating the power of the sail through your front leg and your front hand onto the rig and board. You really want to drive the power through your front leg onto the board and kind of push the board with your legs away from you. And as a beginner, to get too much power from the sail can be very scary because you will be scared of making crashes over the boom. So a lot of beginners, they just pull a little bit and then release again where the sail stands in an upright position. So the key to get planing is that you move your body weight outboard and low. Then you will automatically close the sail and this will generate the power that you need to get on the plane. The other aspect is our body positioning. As we feel the board is accelerating, we want to shift our body weight backwards on the board, basically to where the foot straps are at. Because if we just hang lower and go outboard, yes, we might start to get planing, but you will feel a lot of drag. Because what we want to achieve is that basically the last third of the board is still touching the water. Then only the board will glide really freely over the water and get into the proper planing mode. If we do this too early when we're not planing and we're stepping back on the board, what will happen is that we stall the board because then we're still in displacement mode. So what will happen is that the back of the board is kind of digging into the water and this creates more drag. So what we want to do is that when we are in the neutral position, let's say, and our front foot is basically where the mast rack is at and the back foot a little bit further back, then we want to drop low and outboard and then slowly step back to where the foot straps are at while we are accelerating. And this gradual transition needs a lot of practice and when you master it, you can get onto the plane super easily. And it's just basically also about timing. At what speeds do you move your body weight back? And I just encourage you to try and try and try and you will get better at this. What is important to understand about planing is that the transition from displacement mode to planing mode is the process that requires the most power. Accelerating the board while in displacement mode up to around 10 to 12 knots, at which point the planing usually starts, is so difficult because it is not a gradual transition. The power needed to go faster is the greatest right at this transition. You can imagine that you basically have to get over this resistance and then once you are planing to go faster actually requires less additional energy compared to this transition mode. When you watch a windsurfer that is planing around and a windsurfer that's not in planing mode but in displacement mode, you can observe a key difference between the two. The windsurfer that is not planing has the sail very upright and somewhat opened. The windsurfer in the planing mode will have the sail more leaned to the back and closed. And why is that? As we are getting onto the plane and accelerating, we are gaining a lot of speed. And this gain of speed will cause the apparent wind to change to come more from the front of the board. Because imagine you have 15 knots coming basically from 90 degrees and you're going 30 knots. The apparent wind will come much more from the front compared to if you're going 5 knots and the wind is coming with 15 knots from the side. So for this reason, because we are actually going so fast on a windsurfer, it's important that when we are trying to get planing to close the sail and when we are planing keep the sail locked. So you'll want to generate constant power from your sail through your mast base to keep your planing. So if you're scared of doing crashes, remember that you can always release the backhand, and therefore open the sail and release the power. When you want to get planing, you'll want to wait until you're inside a gust and you have enough power from your sail. Only when you feel that your sail is powered up, start to pull the sail in, get your body into a lower position and lean outboard. If you're doing that without having pressure in the sail, you will not get on the plane. Timing is crucial here. You'll always want to start from going somewhat upwind when you want to get on the plane. Then, depending on the wind strength, we want to go off the wind or downwind. Remember this. The lighter the wind is, the more downwind we need to go to generate power to start planing. The stronger the wind is, the less downwind we need to go to generate enough power to get on the plane. But start from going upwind and then slowly go downwind while leaning your body back and outboard. Planing can take some practice, so don't get discouraged if you don't get there right away. Spend time practicing your starts, body positioning and sail control. I promise you, in time, you'll get there and you'll have so much fun. Thanks for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this video, you might also enjoy this video right here about how well you can windsurf with an inflatable SUP board. It's a cheap option to a proper windsurf board and can be perfect as you start out, so make sure to check out this video. If you don't want to miss any of the content, I would really appreciate if you subscribe to the channel. I'll see you for the next one. Bye.