Windsurf Harness Line Length: The Easiest Upgrade

Adjusting the length of your harness lines is one of the easiest, cheapest and most effective changes you can make as a windsurfer. The pros consistently run lines longer than 30 inches, and there's a good reason for it.

In my technique reviews it's kind of the same things repeating all the time, a few key mistakes a lot of you are making, and line length and grip are among them. It's good to be reminded every now and then. Here's what longer lines do, how to tell if yours are too short, the lengths I use myself, and how to make the switch. Prefer to watch? One of my technique reviews where this comes up again and again is at the end of this guide, and my checklist to save on your phone comes just before the steps.

Why longer harness lines make you faster and more in control

Your hip drops lower: more leverage on the sail

As you extend your harness lines, your hip drops a little lower to the water. That helps you extend your arms and not be so close to the gear. Your hip is further away from the gear, which gives you more leverage on the sail and lets you control it better.

The sail stays upright and works more efficiently

With longer lines your arms become longer, so the sail stays upright and straight. It keeps its projected area and works more efficiently, instead of collapsing to windward.

You stand beside your board, not on top of it

Longer lines let you stand more beside the board rather than on top of it. Then you can push with your legs against the rail, and that generates lift through the fin. With your hip low, you create a kind of wedge against the rail and the fin: the windward rail lifts, you can rail the board and catch less of the chop, and you get more speed out of your board.

With short lines, a lot of the pressure comes down on the board, from the top. That feels controlled, and the board can still fly well, but it won't give you that afterburner, that grunt and that speed.

More room when it counts

Longer lines give you more room to open the sail in critical moments. It's not just about preventing crashes: that extra freedom with the sail helps in almost every situation.

In strong wind, long lines mean a big buffer. If a strong gust hits you and pulls you up, there's a big buffer zone before you actually fall over. With short lines, the gust hits you and you fall over right away. With long lines you can bring your bum out and really control the pressure much better. (More on that in Windsurfing in Strong Wind: 9 Ways to Stay in Control.)

Are your harness lines too short? The signs

When I look at your footage, these tell me the lines are too short:

• Your arms are not extended. They're bent, and you're very close to the boom.
• Your legs are quite angled. We call it, in a way, the toilet position: your hip is low, but your legs are not extended.
• You're quite upright on the board, and a lot of the pressure comes down on the board rather than from the side.

How long should your harness lines be?

It depends on how powered up you are. The more powered up you are, the lower you can drop to the water and the longer you can make your harness lines. When it's light wind and you're struggling to plane, you want the lines to be short and to be a bit more upright on the gear.

To give you some numbers:

• Learning to use the harness: adjustable harness lines between 24 and 30 inches are a safe bet to start with. (That's from my Windsurf Planing Tutorial.)
• The pros consistently run lines longer than 30 inches.
• My own lines: in my Freeride Special I used adjustable lines of 28 to 34 inches. In fin racing I'm somewhere between 30 and 38 inches, and on the day I reached 81.4 km/h they were about 34 to 36 inches.
• On a foil I go even longer: around 6 inches longer than I would on a fin, and in foil racing all the way up to 44 to 46 inches.

How to switch to longer harness lines

1. Get adjustable lines

Ideally you use adjustable (Vario) harness lines, because they significantly increase the wind range you're comfortable with. Take your current length as the baseline: if you're on 26 inches, try a 26 to 32 inch range.

2. Go about 2 inches longer and get used to it

Once you're powered up, lengthen your lines by maybe 2 inches, just to make them a little bit longer, and get accustomed to it, so you can drop your hip a bit lower.

3. Bring your hands close to the lines

Not grabbing too wide is one of the key tips I give most often. With a wide grip you're really shortening your reach. The more you bring your hands together and close to the harness lines, the further you can bring the sail away from you, the more upright you can have the sail, and the more efficient your sailing will be.

Obviously this requires a lot of confidence in your gear and some control, because a wide grip is kind of a secure thing. That's what people tend to do to leverage the sail with more strength rather than technique. Bringing your hands a bit closer together helps with the longer lines, and it should give you better speed potential and hopefully a bit more control. So as you go longer, move your hands a touch narrower on the boom.

4. Drop your hip and let your arms get long

When you're powered up, let your hip drop a little lower to the water as you extend the lines, and your arms extend. The front leg should be much more extended. The back leg always keeps a bit of an angle between the upper and the lower leg, so you can work with the chop. Then put more pressure on the side of the board, on the rail, instead of from the top.

5. Put the weight in the lines, not in your arms

On my own footage you can see it: harness lines quite long, my arms pretty extended and close to the harness lines. All the pressure goes into the harness lines, so the sail is controlled by my body and much less by the pressure in my arms. There's very little pressure on my hands, they're really just controlling a little bit. That lets me extend my arms and drop low near the water, which gives me a lot of leverage on the sail, good speed and control.

In strong wind we tend to become nervous and put a lot of the weight and force of the sail into our arms. Try to put as much power as you can into the harness and away from the arms, and lock yourself in the footstraps.

Line length and boom height go together

The boom height, in combination with the length of your harness lines, lets you put your board in a looser or a more secure trim in the water.

• Light wind, struggling to plane: push the boom up and shorten your lines, and the board becomes looser. Setting the boom at eye level can help you lift more area above the water, for less resistance.
• Light or normal wind: bring your hips up. The sail comes more upright, you get more juice in your sail and it's easier to get planing. Sitting low with your bum down when the wind isn't even that strong usually puts a lot of weight on the back of the board, the nose comes up and you push the board through the water instead of planing.
• Strong wind and chop: put the boom lower and lengthen your lines. That lets you bring your body into a lower position, further away from the sail, which increases your control in extreme conditions. Try your lines 2 to 4 inches (about 5 to 10 cm) longer than you normally would. Only your hip goes out: keep your upper body close to the rig. Bringing your upper body outboard creates lift, that's the light-wind move.
• The boom in strong wind: setting it at chest level can help you keep the nose from rising. Don't go too low: that can create a lot of downforce, the board pushes too much water and strong wind gets even harder to control. About chest high is typically a good boom height in strong wind, given the rest of your sail trim is correct.

On wide boards the boom will have to go higher, because the width of the board puts you further away from the base than on smaller boards. (More speed tuning in 5 secrets to windsurf faster.)

On a foil: even longer

For foiling you want to keep the harness lines long, longer than you would normally use them. That gives you a bit more range of motion and a more secure feel, and it encourages the right technique: your hips low, so you can put tension on the lines and keep the point of leverage really low. Of course long is a bit relative: it depends on your arm length, your boom width and of course your level. For me, that's around 6 inches longer than on a fin. (The full foil setup is in Windfoil Setup: How to Trim Your Sail, Board and Foil.)

With that said, it's time to try it on the water. Here's my harness line checklist to save on your phone for the beach, and below it the steps once more.