Well it’s May, the month Lake Martin becomes more destination for in water fun and play. The water temperature starts the month out pretty chilly, but by the end of the month has that refreshing quality and the use of neoprene is down to maybe a top if you want to use it to stay comfortable. The early morning and late evening especially are good times for it (exception – the macho dudes that wont’ wear neoprene and have blue lips, your cool, no doubt.)
Last month we talked a lot about how the sport of wakesurfing has grown with all of the lines from the manufacturers that make the surfers. The growth of the numbers of boards we have to choose from are enormous. The cool thing now is, the boat guys are making sure we have easier time getting the wave. Initially we started with the boats, loaded the back corner with water and put everyone on one side, hoped for the best. The wave was ok at best. Well, those days are long gone. Wakesurfing is a priority of new boats and if it doesn’t have a top notch surf and quick fill ballast system.. big fat red X. All years of pre surf system boats just took the value beating of a lifetime.. cause who wants a 30 minute change in weight from side to side? If you have never sat in the scorching sun for the duration of all your ballast tanks to be drained, moved and refilled on the opposite side..well you waited until the right time to start wakesurfing. WORKING 30 minutes on ballast change was a royal pain in the butt and if you wanted to wakeboard and surf left, then surf right you better have some patient people and an empty slough to ride. The boat was leaned to one side to the point of ridiculousness. you wanted your boat set up that way for this enormous swell to follow you down the lake, and it would.. which is all fine and dandy, until you had to swap sides.
Today almost every boat manufacturer has followed suit of Malibu’s patented Surfgate. Malibu came out with surfgate as they were coming up with a solution to the AXIS’s surf wake. The bottom of the platform was changing the lip of the AXIS wake. In the process of working out how to reshape it, one of the guys came up with the wake diversion idea, which by taking a “paddle” on the transom and pushing it out with a actuator it would diverge one side of the wake to impact the other sides farther back allowing a side to shape up into a great surf wave.. WITHOUT leaning the boat over. The first question I get is..”So we don’t have to weight the boat anymore?” No, this is not the case. We weight the boat as much, if not more, but the boat is flat, not leaned. The gates can be alternated (in the Surfgate V2.0) in less that 2 seconds and you can literally surf back and forth from frontside to backside on the wake with the flip of a switch.
Within the next year boat manufactures were coming up with alternate surf systems. You can’t copy the patent, so figure out the next best way to do it. Nautique was the first with it’s NSS (Nautique Surf System) and now Tige, Supra, and Mastercraft all have systems for their boats and all are quite different. You can see video after video on YouTube about which one is best and who has the best wave. You should also make sure that you see, what the wave is like on both sides when you look at surf systems. The prop direction causes the wake to change and some are more drastic than others.
The next upgrade was the ballasts, we have options to plug into the current system and add more. PLUS, my favorite is the high speed pumps so you don’t have to wait long to fill the tanks and get riding, the same goes for dumping water and heading home. If you want to wakesurf, the boats and boards are top notch right now and the only thing holding you back is you.
Get out there and catch a wave.
Sawyer
