Jibing

Power Jibe by StableRoad. A very comprehensive series of videos. Added bonus: 80's haircuts, neon stylings and reverb-drenched drum machines! Seriously though, these videos break the steps down very well, and show some common mistakes and how to overcome them. Since they're quicktime movies it's easy to pause and go frame by frame.
Windsurf Maneuvers: Jibe (Google video) by Free Your Mind Productions, hosted by Lars Petersen. This is the video I keep coming back to. It's concise, well executed and that green water is so soothing. There's a link to download this vid, which allows you to do the same frame by frame trick.
12 Step Jibe by Dasher. This is a summary excerpt from the famous DVD by Dasher. I don't know who "Dasher" is, but he sounds exactly like Chevy Chase in slow motion.
Royn Bartholdi. An excellent step-by-step guide. Explore the rest of Royn's site. It's a gold mine.

I was encouraged to go for J+ last year, even though I was planning on getting better at my waterstarts first. It turned out to be a great push forward for me, so I encourage you to do the same.

In some ways, carve jibes on a shortboard are almost a completely different maneuver from slow jibes on beginner boards. You have to fight your instinct to slow down, and your feet are doing the steering, rather than the position of the sail. That said, it's a lot easier to progress to carving jibes after getting pretty good at slow jibes.

I'm finding it helpful to just focus on one aspect per session. It's like practicing piano, where you start with one hand at a time, one measure at a time and then slowly work on getting both hands together and connecting phrases. Eventually, you'll find that the first few steps that you needed to concentrate so hard on start happening automatically.

Don't be one of the cool kids, hanging out waiting for the wind to go over 20. You have a mission. Every kind of weather is an opportunity to practice. One of my big steps forward happened on a 5 knot day, on a 145 liter board when I was practicing the sail flip on a slow jibe. True, I wasn't carving, but I was able to focus on just the balance of the sail and how the front hand acts as a pivot, in slow motion.

This move takes a lot of practice. So far for me, it's taken more hours than waterstarting and getting comfortable in the footstraps, combined. I started learning at the beginning of May, and I'm finally (beginning of August) starting to get the hang of it. I hope to make 1 in 3 attempts by the end of the season, 1 in 2 maybe. Pace yourself. Turn off learning mode sometimes and just blast. It's frustrating sometimes so don't forget the whole purpose of all this is to have fun!

Gunnar