Start the trick by sailing crosswind pretty powered up and start bearing slightly downwind to ease the switching of your feet, to find yourself in switch stance, ready to pop like overheated corn. As soon as you spot a little steep piece of chop, sheet in on your back hand, thus generating more pull on your mast hand. This hand movement will act as a slingshot, allowing you to generate enough momentum to complete the whole rotation with enough speed still to ease the ducking of the sail, which is the icing on the cake.

Push down hard on your back leg and then tuck it up, keeping the front one extended, sticking the nose in the water which will pivot you around. Keep your bodyweight centred over the board and the boom close to your chest, in order to rotate flawlessly. You can control the power of the sail with your back hand, and I actually suggest keeping the clew in the wind longer than you would for a regular eslider, to allow the board to complete the full rotation before initiating the ducking of the clew.

After completing the rotation, it’s just a matter of finding the right balance and keeping the weight over the board, while letting go of the boom with the front hand to grab the clew and the flipping the sail pretty much clew first. Even though it’s called Diablo, in this case you don’t actually duck the sail, but just flip clew first. Try reaching as far forward as you can when grabbing the boom on the new side, since the clew will tend to pull you downwind when passing into the wind at 450° of the whole 540° rotation.

That’s why it’s better to have still a little bit of speed left, so that you have more balance and less power in the clew in the final diablo part. This move is just a little fun varation, but it’s really helpful if you want to go all out on combos! If you can manage to jump again while flippin the sail and then rotating another 360…you’ll have…Eslider into Switch chachoo! Tadaaaaaa. Now that’s magic! MP