[quote=DamonLinkous]Matt!
Glad you came out of it without severe damage to boat or body! You had me worried reading your account that you had really broken yourself.
Did you cut yourself on the the dagger or anything? Reading that I figured you'd be bleeding bad for sure. Young guys heal fast, so you got that going for you. :-O
Thanks for writing it all down.
You were in a bad spot, basically the "Zone of Death" where you had already let everything out and now turning into the wind or sheeting in was going to have the same effect. The violent pitchpole is actually caused by going too slow! It's counter-intuitive, but your only chance to jibe or come up into the wind under those conditions is to keep the apparent wind low by keeping your boat-speed up. It's the sudden violent increase in apparent wind speed that sends you over like that.
So what you have to do is sail gradually higher and higher, increasing speed as you go until you have low apparent wind, then you have to "go for it" and carve the jibe across dead down wind onto the other jibe and keep spinning around until you are pointing up wind.
There is still a good chance you are screwed, but at least the crash won't be so bad. :-D
Those bruises and wrenched muscles are going to hurt a lot more later and they should produce some interesting colors.
My arm after a solo pitchpole on my Hobie 18 just before the start of the triangle racing at Juanas in 2012.
Welcome to the club. (if you weren't already a member)
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