In the very early days of the sport, the only harness available was the Chest Harness with hook even higher than the Waist Harness.  The Chest Harness could really screw your back up so you seldom, see anyone using a Chest Harness today.

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To hook in, you pull the booms closer to the harness hook.  If your harness lines are much lower than the hook you may need to bend your knees to lower the hook to get hooked in.

To unhook just pull the booms closer and you may have to straighten your legs some to raise the hook if the lines don’t fall out of the hook.  If you are unhooking because you think you are about to fall, you will need to get your feet out of the foot straps at the same time as you are unhooking.  You will have to wiggle your feet out of the straps.  You don’t want your foot straps too open where you can get your feet in too deep in the straps to get out easily.  Of course you don’t want your foot straps so tight that you have trouble getting your feet into the straps in the first place. 

When you are first leaning to use a harness you hook in and out of the harness lines pretty frequently.  After a while you learn that you don’t need to unhook very often.

While hooked in if you feel yourself getting pulled off balance to leeward just sheet out while hooked in, fall back to windward some and then sheet back in, all while still hooked in.

If you feel like you are going to fall to windward, tilt the mast a little bit forward toward the nose of the board and sheet in hard, this will bring you more up right and in balance again.

It may help to practice on the beach some before going out in the water.  Remove your tail fin or dig a hole in the sand for the fin so you can stand on the board on the beach.   Up haul the sail and try to find the balance point on the booms where you can hang on to the booms with just one hand while the sail stays at the correct angle to the wind.   Attach your harness lines to the booms.  The forward and aft attachment points on the boom should be about the same 2 or 3 inches forward and aft of the balance point where you could hang on to the boom with just one hand.  Stand on the board on land (sand) and practice hooking in and out on each tack.  Now go out and try it in the water.

If you fall while hooked in, especially if you fall to leeward while hooked in, don’t let go of the booms.  Use your arms like shock absorbers so the booms don’t bruise your ribs.

If you fall to windward while hooked in, the sail will be on top of you.  If you still have air between the sail and the water, and you are still hanging on to the booms, you may want to try a water start at this point.  Tilt the mast forward towards the nose of the board a little bit, straighten your arms while treading water with your legs, try to get the sail up as high as possible to present as much sail area to the wind as possible, try to rest your heels on the board, sheet in a little and try gauge if the wind is strong enough to pull you out of the water and on to the board to sail away or not.  If not, try to move your front hand to the mast below the booms and your back hand from the booms to the foot of the sail.  This will allow you to present more sail area to the wind and you may still be able to pull off a water start.  This was how I started learning to water start.

If you fall to windward and the sail is resting on the water and you are underneath the sail, you will have to unhook and swim out from under the sail.  Don’t panic!   Just unhook, open your eyes, and follow the booms swimming in the direction of the clew (back corner of the sail where the out haul attaches the sail to the booms).  This should only take a few seconds and you should be able to hold your breath much longer than it takes to swim out from under the sail.  Even if you swim the wrong way, to the head (top corner of the sail) which is a longer distance than swimming to the clew of the sail, you should not have any trouble holding your breath that long.  When you get out from under the sail catch your breath and keep trying to learn the harness.

Once you are comfortable using the harness you will find the you use much less energy when it is windy enough to hook in, than when the wind is too light to use a harness.  Most people can use the harness starting around 8 to 10 knots of wind.  Below that wind speed, you may only be able to use the harness when sailing up wind (close hauled).  You will have to sail unhooked on other points of sail in light wind.

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Rick Upson

2026 SPSC Commodore