Caught out in the middle at Valentine when the southerly blasts in.

[@horsemadf1]

I'm wearing a seat harness with a low hook. I unhook deliberately. I was so overpowered I didn't want to get flung. The front hand forward is a survival mechanism. I know it's technically not right, but I feel safer and can push the boom away if it tries to take control . Just my way of handling overpowering conditions. I know the wide harness lines aren't the standard thing, but I've decided at my age, and with our gusty , patchy winds, they work for me. I've been working on the gybes but broke my wrist speedsailing and was off the water for most of the last 2 years since this video was taken. Still plugging away, trying to fix my many ingrained bad habits. I think your impression of the too high hook etc comes from the angle of the camera I think your impression of the harness hook being too low is partly camera angle and because of my bad habit of hanging back and bending my front arm gybing. I'm working on a lot of things but it's hard breaking a 30 year habits.🙄 I might experiment with putting the boom a little higher but it's a narrow very flighty board. I've been talking to the designer and he suggested mast foot forward and move the footstraps forward to help gybing. .Plus of course I need to work on my gybes. A work in progress 🙄

[@kristianvrum8979]

I do understand that you don't ask for advice here, and that the video is a couple of years old, but based on what I see here I'd say that it seems that your harness hook is way too high, and that you need to switch to a seat harness. The high hook puts you in an awkward position too close to the boom, which means that you can't control the power and channel the forces from the rig down into the board. You need to find a way to get some distance between the boom and your body, and a lower hook position will be the easiest way to acheive this (commiting 100% to the harness at all times is of course also of utmost importance, or else you'll become un-hooked, like we see here). And to point out the obvious, a very wide grip on the boom, with the front hand way too far forward, is a tell-tale sign that something is wrong, and that you need to change your trim and position. Note here that the hand and feet need to match each other, so that a very far forward hand position will necessitate a (too far) forward position of the front foot or too much pressure on the front foot (=unstable stance). On a general note, I'd say that females should avoid waist harnesses for normal sailing (ie. anything else than wave and freestyle), and that many smaller females tend to put their booms too low, which further exacerbates the problem (I can't see the boom heigth in this video though). Sorry about the mansplaining, but I can assure you that this is written with the best of intentions.

[@horsemadf1]

Ps - You've got me thinking. I'll never put my lines a fist apart. Hate the idea , but I've been toying with making them a little bit closer together. They are long adjustables and sometimes I want them shorter to help upwind. They have a hard plastic tube over the lines. I've cut a few cms off so I can get them shorter but they still feel a bit long. To overcome that I sometimes spread the lines a bit wider. I think I'll cut a bit more outer case off so I can get them shorter and narrow the lines by a few inches. You've got to be careful not to nic the inner line, though, so it's a bit tricky.🙄