Help me with my suckage

[shmish]

I made it down to Jericho this afternoon and got on the water by about 4pm. I dropped my sail, a 6.5 retro, out in the chop. I managed to clear the sail quickly but I couldn't get it up enough (that's what she said). Even though there wasn't much swell/chop, it felt like the wind was another foot over top of my sail. It was exhausting try to get it high enough to catch wind, I can't even say that it was really flying. I'm sort of on the smaller size standing at 5'5", so I have a bit of a shorter reach. As soon as I got close enough to shore where the water was pretty flat, I could waterstart almost immediately. Is this just a case of me sucking 100%, or is it possible that my "sail isn't catching any wind" is a thing? At the time I didn't think of it, but I guess I could have tried to hold on to the mast below the boom. The sail felt like it weighed 50 lbs.

[Mike]

Hard to say for sure. I will assume your basic waterstart is fine. In this case it could be that you were in a wind lull. So just wait it out. If this is happening repeatedly however. this is less likely the problem. The other basic thing is your positioning. Ensure you are angled in the right direction to the wind. In light wind, perhaps a bit more downwind board position than normal - play around with this until you "feel the force". Aside from this, there are techniques to water start in light wind that take practice and watching utube. Like you said, hold mast lower or hold boom more to clew side (away from mast) are examples to "raise the mast." The old standing uphaul is there too but depending on conditions and gear, this takes practice too.

[joeblo]

Depending on when you where out, the wind was very gusty yesterday. Like Mike said, sometimes you just have to wait for a gust to come back. Another thing you can do is lower your boom height. That gives the wind more leverage to pull the sail out of the water. There are advantages and disadvantages to changing your boom height depending on whether your are a trickster or a speedster. You may want to research that.
Another common problem is that people pull on the sail too early instead of letting the sail stand up as much as possible. You should let your sail stand up by not trying to pull on it until your body is very close to your board. Hips that is, swimming pools and movie stars.(old guy reference to a t v show). Then you do a chin up right under the boom instead of having your back at angle between the water and the mast and do a backwards push-up (pulling the boom to your chest) kind of move which just pulls the sail back into the water.
A great thing to practice is water starting by grabbing the mast with your front hand and the foot of the sail with your back hand. After I learned to do that, I guy came up to me and said he had seen that on the internet, but had never seen anyone do it in real life. (One of my rock star windsurfing moments!)

[Whalepuke]

Try more back hand pressure. It will help to steer your nose more downwind and in turn bring the head of your sail up off the water and catch the wind. Let your front arm out while applying back hand pressure. Good luck

[imdmitry]

Everyone who learn waterstart struggle to do it on the other side.
Specially all the places where we usually launch are port tack - left had forward: Jericho, Nitinat and even Gorge from Oregon side.
You do hundreds beach starts from one side but none from the other. That's why other side sucks and struggle.

[JonathanP]

Have you tried kicking with your front foot? And save energy in light wind by first starting to lift the sail from the mast tip at first and working towards the boom to get it flying out of the water with minimal effort. I usually keep the mast almost perpendicular to the wind and board tip cross/up wind with my back foot resting until a good enough gust comes along. Then swing the mast tip into the wind to push the nose of the board downwind and start kicking your front foot towards the tail of the board to generate a bit of momentum. Hopefully your hips are flexible here and you can squeeze your body close to the board and let the sail up as far as possible without pulling down. Then you can keep kicking as you step onto the board and only pull on the boom perpendicular to the mast so the board sinks a bit, but the sail doesn't fall back.
But sometimes the wind sucks and you have to swim out from under your dropped sail, that's when I usually give up!

[adam2]

It can be tiring waterstarting a 6.5 in big chop or swell, especially in marginal wind. Given that 6.5s are usually used on big boards there's always a temptation for me just to uphaul the thing. I don't know what the wind was doing in your case, but I find it's helpful to bear the nose of the board upwind for when setting up to waterstart in light winds, and downwind in high winds. Keeping my front arm straight in light wind while waterstarting was a tip I was given a long time ago as it expose as much sail as possible to the wind to help get you up. With enough time on the water it all becomes easier.