Wakesurfing!

Learn how to wakesurf.

Overview:

Wakesurfing is the most fun you can have without the rope. But before we get started there is some important safety issues we need to clear up. Wakesurfing is a sport that you need to do behind an inboard boat. Because of an exposed propeller and the strong possibility of an inward fall you cannot and I repeat cannot wakesurf behind conventional Inboard/Outboards or outboards. Also, there is a serious risk about carbon monoxide inhalation there are things you can do to curb the risk, stay up high, wakesurf on days with a breeze, don’t wakesurf for hours on end, and your best bet is to have a boat with catalytic converters like indmar’s ex-cat or pcm’s catnium system.

Gear:

To wakesurf you will need a wakesurf board and when you are learning the bigger the better, a good board to use to start is the liquid force venture 5’6” because it is long it can run quickly on all wakes. You will also need a short rope, about 15 feet, wakesurf specific ropes are great because they have large braided handles that are good for finding the sweet spot of the wake.  Last but perhaps most important is the vest, always wear a vest wakesurfing, it may seem silly because of slow speeds and a more mellow feel however it is surprisingly easy to get your head near the board and or platform of the boat during bails and for this reason you want a vest that’s going to float you incase you bang your head and are unable to get up properly.

Surfing:

So now that we have the gear sorted lets get technical. Getting up on a wakesurf is fairly easy, it has tons of surface area, and lots of buoyancy so the surfer will get up without ever taking the boat over 10mph to get up use the short line and get up as you would on a wakeskate or wakeboard have your driver idle ahead slowly while you apply pressure to the rail of the board with your heels, allow the water pressure from the boat moving forward to let the board settle under your feet and when you are ready signal the driver to go. Once you are up like wakeboarding have side to side control using your balance and weight distribution, but because you are using gravity you also have the ability to accelerate and break your board. This can also be controlled by changing your weight. To accelerate you need to apply pressure to your front foot and to break apply pressure to your rear foot.  Using these skills and working your way up the rope with your hands you need to begin looking for the neutral spot on the wake. Every wake and every board has a different neutral spot.  The neutral spot is the area where you can comfortably stand on the board with your weight relatively centered and have the board so that it doesn’t want to run down the wake and it doesn’t drag you back to a tight rope.  You can tell you have reached the neutral spot when your rope goes slack and you don’t feel like you have to work to keep it that way.  This is the point where most people loose it. The neutral spot is often small and fickle it changes with even the slightest deviation in speed or weight distribution in the boat or your legs.  Normally when people find it they get excited and throw the rope and in doing so throw off their balance and loose their footing in the neutral spot.  The best thing you can do for your first couple sets is work on finding that neutral spot and standing in it trying to keep the rope slack and remaining still and comfortable. I know right, how fun does that sound? Don’t worry once you have your sweet spot dialed that’s when the real fun begins. If you really understand where your neutral spot is you can begin to throw the rope, I suggest that you spend a couple sets doing that it is important that when you go out surfing you use the rope find the neutral spot, relax spend some time making sure your footing and balance is right, then gently throw the rope into the boat. Again once you have thrown the rope again focus on staying in that neutral spot keeping your balance and enjoying the freedom of surfing with no rope! If you find yourself running down the wake and in towards the boat apply slight pressure to your back foot, if you feel as though you are drifting away from the boat do the opposite apply pressure to your front foot to accelerate you down the wake back towards your neutral zone. Once you can spend an entire set with no rope comfortably in the neutral zone you are there! As long as you know where you can safely and comfortably stand you can feel free to roam about the wake slashing doing floaters, threes, olies and shuvs, whenever you feel out of balance or drive try to get your body back into the neutral zone and you will regain your balance and be able to surf for hours!

Driving:

Driving and weighting the boat for surfing are just as important and difficult as the surfing itself you can completely dictate what happens behind the boat just by how you steer, accelerate and weight the boat. To properly weight the boat you should apply most of the weight/ballast to the rear corner of the rider’s front foot, so if you are left foot forward you should weight the left/port side of the boat and the opposite for right foot forward weight the right/starboard side of the boat. This includes the people. Having a bunch of people in the boat is great because people are easy to move and you can use them to adjust the wake as necessary. When you are towing for surfing you are traveling around 9 or 10 mph however it varies depending on a lot of conditions, we often use perfectpass or zero off because it allows us to make very small adjustments to the throttle, and can keep a pretty consistent speed. As a driver you also have the ability to control the shape of the wake, depending on the boat and how it is weighted a great deal of the time it helps to turn the boat slightly inward to the rider. One of the most important aspects of driving for surfing as far as safety, is during your falls and recovery, when a rider falls or is going to fall if you commonly do a lot of driving for wakeboarding your first instinct will be to cut the throttle and throw it into neutral when the rider falls, it is actually much safer while wakesurfing to keep the boat traveling forward for a brief while the rider falls so that they fall away from the boat instead of towards it, because you are so close to the back of the boat by slamming on the breaks you create a greater risk of having the wakesurfer fall onto the back of the boat or have the board fling out from under their feet into the back of your new MasterCraft X-Star. Also when retrieving the surfer always make sure that they are on the driver’s side so you can see them at all times and they can recover the rope be extra careful picking up surfers as they are much closer to the boat all the time. 

Article by: JP