The Beach Race Start Coach Victoria breaks down the basics of a successful racing start from the beach.
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Example: Top hand is outside of the board and over the board's rail.[/caption]
How you get your top hand over the water actually matters. If you’re just moving your top arm in front of your face to get your hand over the water, you’ll be putting your top shoulder in a disadvantageous position - from both the perspective of producing power and preventing injury. So, as you move your top hand toward the rail and over the water try to do the following:
Weighting one side of the race board to help keep it going straight.[/caption]
Even subtle changes in body weight distribution from one foot to the other can have an effect on steering and board tracking, especially if the board is moving quickly enough. The easiest way to change that distribution of body weight enough to assist with large steering corrections is through your hips. Consider what you do when standing on land to put more weight on one foot than the other. Rather than lean your entire body over one foot and effectively lean from your foot up, you almost reflexively let your hip sort of thrust to one side and lock out over the foot you want to put more weight on. It’s helpful to experiment with this on land first so when you get on your board you’ll know what you’re trying to do. When you get on your board you’ll find that pushing your hip to the side opposite the one you’re paddling on not only puts much more weight over the non-paddling side foot but also helps you get your upper body over the paddle and the board’s paddling side rail a little more. This in turn makes it much easier to execute the first tool we’ve discussed for tracking your board straight – pulling close to the rail.
Tip: When you weight the opposite rail as described above, it raises the paddling side rail. If you weight the opposite rail enough it brings the paddling side up to the point where it comes close to exposing the underside of your board, making it even easier to paddle under the board. This combination of weighting the opposite rail and paddling under the board is much more effective in tracking the board straight than either tool is on its own.
If you come from a snowboarding or skateboarding background this idea of leaning away from the direction you want to go will be counter-intuitive, since you are likely used to steering towards the side you are leaning to. Similarly, surf and SUP surf boards steer towards the weighted side as well. This has to do with the fact that these boards do not have displacement shapes and thus do not behave like other paddled craft. Instead of their noses biting, their much sharper rails bite when weighted, causing them to turn to the weighted side.
However - and here’s where it can get confusing - if a displacement board’s nose is entirely out of the water because you are standing at the back of the board, it will behave like a SUP surf board and steer to the weighted side. This is necessary when surfing a displacement board. In this case, with the nose and rounded rails towards the front of the board out of the water, only the sharp rails near the tail are in the water and the board adopts the characteristics of a surf board shape and turns to the weighted side.
Check out the video of weighting the opposite rail.
Note how the paddle blade is "opened" as it is about to enter the water.[/caption]
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