How to tack a surfboard?

[drone]

Hi everyone, i'm newbie here. This summer sold all my TT and began to ride strapless. I have no problems to jybe, but have problems with tacking. I saw a lots of videos on You tube, looks nice and easy, but i can not turn surfboard upwind on ~180 degrees.
Please post here your experience...

[starsky]

Thats a decent tutorial from the guys at Caution but its much fancier than what I usually end up doing when trying to max upwind.

I usually work on breaking out the tail for a 180 with stance switch right at the stall/pivot as the kite comes across the top like most racers do but have found the easiest is to just tack like I'm on a twin tip and pretty much as soon as the board is moving backward but on the new tack, dig your heelside edge over the fins and let the nose slide a downwind 180 and head out toe side, then when your comfy switch stance. I guess thats kind of a mash up between a jibe and a tack! But it loses no ground.

[Lonny]

Hi Drone,

Welcome to LTS! Thank you for joining us here and posting your question.

The Duck Tack is a cool tack and especially useful for racing. I do a tack that I believe is called the Kangaroo tack, but I am not positive. I picked it up from watching Ian Alldredge, and once you get it dialed its pretty darned easy and keeps you upwind in the waves. Essentially all you do is use your back foot to drive the nose of your board upwind. As you do this you slowly bring your kite from 1 o'clock to about 11. As you head up you will feel the kite give you a little lift or almost a bit of weightlessness on your board. At that point you take your front foot and move it towards the nose of the board and move your back foot towards the center of the board to pivot on. Your front foot is used to break the fins and allow you to push the other 180 degrees to make it a tack. It might be a bit hard to visualize through text. I will try to shoot some video of it the next time I an out riding.

Remember you have to take the weight off the back of your board to break the fins, otherwise it just will not go the other 180 degrees, which I think is where you might be having a problem. I am sure if Jon chimes in he can give you some more really good pointers, but I hope that helps a little.

[drone]

Thanks for reply, I already found mistakes what I have made, I will try and report back.