Spotting Windshifts.

So, I don't need to know how, I'm OK with it, but I'd like to know how you tell others how to do it.

I was showing a new guy what they were on the water on sunday, pointing out how the wind fans out and that you can have two boats both on a lift sailing in opposite directions in some conditions when the wind is coming down from above more like we get in the cold Northerlies we had on sunday.

The conversation then got round to light conditions where they can be more devastating if you get them wrong and I pointed out you can't rely on the wind indicators and burgee things that are fitted to the actual boat, then I wondered how is it they actually teach you then.

We windsurfers obviously use our ears or feel the shifting pressure in the sail, that combined obviously with the changing angles of the fleet in their attitude to our position. After quite a long while I can kind of sense them a bit through my backside in a boat by not holding the tiller too tight, rocking the boat to leeward when hunting lifts and to weather when faced with a header but it's taken me these almost ten bloody years and it's still not totally reliable.

But the tricky thing is what I call false headers, which aren't headers, they can even be lifts which come about when the pressure of the true wind drops and the momentum continues so your wind indicator thingy points nose first and gives you the impression you're head to wind when you really aren't.

I've not seen all this described anywhere, it wasn't in Start to Win, so my question is what book is the best reference for all this, so I can recommend it. We have a few grown up late starters and it's going to take them ages to come from trailing round at the back of the fleet unless they get some help understanding wind shift tactics, which is the best book and or how were you taught?

Edited by iGRF - 03 Feb 15 at 9:40am

Thanks TT, is it any good have you read it?

I wrote something for Fernhurst books once, eons ago, Tim somebody, maybe even Fernhurst, was that his name? Damned if I can remember, I note they have a tactics book as well, not brilliant, all Timmy Tacker, Harriet Header & Sally Shifter patronising drivel but it's got the basics. I shall point him there...

I bet there's no mention of the nitty gritty of it all though knowing which ones to go with and which to ignore..

Edited by iGRF - 03 Feb 15 at 9:58am

Tim Davidson that's probably the guy, it was 35 years ago now, can't remember exactly what it was, might have been a translation I did from Yank to English.

They were doing dinghy stuff back then so they must be like me, forgotten more than most folk know these days..

I refer to it as Velocity Sheer - covered on page 99 of Club Sailor along with other weird wind effects like downdrafts and updrafts. Downdrafts also here