Wakesurfing News

Saving your new profile picture

No doubt you’ve heard that salt water is more bouyant than fresh water. If you ever been in a salt water pool, like they have on ocean liners, you know that you seem to float more or more of your body is out of the water. It’s a weird sensation.

What’s happening is that salt water, of course, has salt in it. It’s fresh water with more stuff in it! Have you ever poured salt into a glass of tap water? Does the salt float? No, it sinks to the bottom unless you stir it up. It sinks, because salt is more dense than plain water.

Salt water from the ocean is more dense than fresh water. So when you’re floating in it, your volume and weight don’t change simply because you are in the ocean. Hence, your density remained the same but the fluid you chose to FLOAT in, became more dense with the addition of the salt and related chemicals.

Are you more buoyant? No, feels that way, but it’s just that the water is more dense. That is for a given volume, that amount of salt water weighs more. Your volume, weight and density doesn’t change simple by jumping into the saltwater, so you’d displace a smaller volume of water when you jump in, and you’d float higher in the water.

Here is an amazing drawing that gives you a visual. When you are floating in water, you are displacing an equal volume of water. If you weigh MORE than that volume of water, you sink. If you weigh less you float. When, like people, you are almost the same density you float semi-submerged until that equalization occurs. So since salt water is denser that fresh water, you’ll reach that equalization point “earlier” if you will.  Causing you to float higher in the water.

So here are some interesting observations. If ocean water is more dense than fresh water, such that we displace less salt water and more fresh water, if float and displacement or even volume or bouyancy were a “deal” what would be the relationship between wakesurf boards and ocean surfboards in terms of size and volume? If there were a corrolation there.

Wakesurf boards would need to be bigger, huh? Fresh water being less dense, requires more displacement, so boards should be BIGGER, have more volume, more buoyancy, be longer and wider and thicker in order to achieve the same level of performance. IF bouyancy were a deal. Right? If buoyancy were a performance deal when surfing whether it be fresh or salt water, that corrolation would remain consistent and linear and our wakesurf boards would need to be LARGER in all dimensions to compensate for the decreased buoyancy.

Huh, imagine that?! And wakesurf boards aren’t “larger” in all dimensions because – that’s all squat! Surfboard length and volume and buoyancy is mostly for purposes of paddling in and out, which mostly we don’t do…ever…behind the boat.  We get there are exceptions and some folks wakesurf in brackish or salt water, but by-and-large, that isn’t the norm.

At the Supreme Mexico Wake Surf Championship, no one had any problems surfing due to increased buoyancy in the salt water. BUT we did hear folks talk about the water being soft. Almost like how we treat hard water with ionized salt to remove some of the checmicals and make it feel “softer”. We aren’t sure what’s happening there, but one thing we did note was that in terms of density, salt water is about 3% more dense that fresh water. So in the above example, your body would float at some point when that 3% increase in density was met. It doesn’t really relate to the depth that you’d float in, only the 3% change in displacement. But, here is the thing, if you’ve ever been in a salt water pool, you know that you can feel it!

So could our wakesurfing pro’s feel it? Yeah probably. If we can feel the difference when floating in a pool, wakesurf pros no doubt recognize the change. BUT it’s not float and really buoyancy isn’t an effect when we are planing on the surface.

As mentioned above, salt water, according to any number of sources, is about 3% more dense than fresh water. Let’s put that into perspective Our boat and ballast combination is probably somewhere in the area of 6,000 pounds. 3 percent of that number is 180 pounds. Not very much, huh? If you weigh 150 pounds, it would be like adding 4′ish pounds. Would it stop you dead in your tracks? No, but you’d feel it! Heck we all do, who hasn’t tried to loose that last 5 pounds???!!!

Anyway, is salt water more bouyant than fresh water? Yes indeedy. Is it significant, probably not. What’s interesting to us is that we have a quatifiable number. Where 3% of something, in this case the density of the salt water compared to fresh water, is noticeable. It didn’t impact wakesurfing negatively as we still saw tons of Tricks. James threw both a backside big spin and a HUGE front shuv, and landed both but had issues when backside switch, falling away from the wake and on the back big he stuffed the nose in the water when trying to recover switch. Was that 3% enough to change the timing or maybe the feel of the board compared to fresh water? Who knows! It certainly could be. We know that 3% number is tangible and, at least for the pro level riders, was evident. As the skill level decreased so did the ability to notice any difference.  The take away though is 3% is a definitive measurement for pro level riders, but not so much for amateurs and salt water, is a doable wakesurf medium for venue planning like at the Loreto Stop!

Thanks so much for following along, we really appreciate it.

Technorati Tags: buoyancy, Loreto Stop

KEENAN FLEGEL 2013 VIDEO -CHAPTER 1

Keenan Flegel 2013 wake surfing video. 3 Chapters video coming on 05.13.13 / 05.27.13 / 06.10.13. by FOCUS FL PRODUCTIONS

We wanted to talk a little about the number of Flyboy Wakesurf boards on the podium at the Loreto Stop. Men’s Masters, Men’s Pro Surf both first place winners were on Flyboy designs. Men’s Outlaw Surf and Men’s Masters had second place finishes on Flyboy Wakesurf Boards and Women’s Masters and Women’s Outlaw Surf had a third place finish on a Flyboy Wakesurf board.

That’s 6 podiums for the Flyboy Wakesurf James Walker Pro model. How does that compare to the other manufacturers?

Inland Surfer Non-Flyboy models  4
Phase 5                                              4
ASC                                                      3
Soulcraft                                              3
Evercarve                                            2
Roush customs                                 2
Triple x                                                 2
Mendonesia                                       1
Victoria                                                1

So Flyboy Wakesurf boards had more podium spots than Trple X, Mendonesia and Victoria combined!! Twice as many as Soulcraft and ASC. And 50% more than all the other Inland boards and Phase 5 boards. When you compare the global sales of a brand like Phase 5 to Flyboy, we don’t compare at ALL. There must be 10,000 more Phase 5 units easily than there are Flyboy’s.

What does that mean to you? Well at this contest a higher number of Flyboy wakesurf riders podiumed than any other brand and there are significantly less Flyboy Wakesurf Boards floating around than all the other Inland Boards or the Phase 5′s probably even Solucrafts. You do the math. If we aren’t mistaken, 100% of the Flyboy Wakesurf riders made a podium spot, that wasn’t true for many other brands.

So obviously you will too! No, we can’t say that, but there are lots of folks that podiumed at this contest that choose to ride a Flyboy Wakesurf board. Certainly, James Walker wakesurfing his Flyboy Wakesurf board has won more pro men’s surf style contests than any other brand or model in the last few years.  That is, of course a testatment, to James’ skill and hard work, but also to the design and board he’s riding.

We wanted to talk a little about bouyancy and salt water when we come back tomorrow. It was kind of interesting and we wanted to share with everyone our observations from the Supreme Mexico Wake Surf Championship. One major difference between surfing and wakesurfing is that surfing is done in salt water and, for the most part, wakesurfing is done in fresh water.

We hope you’ll come back tomorrow for that discussion! Thanks so much for following along!

Technorati Tags: Flyboy Division James walker signature model, flyboy wakesurf boards, Loreto Stop

KEENAN FLEGEL 2013 VIDEO -CHAPTER 1

Keenan Flegel 2013 wake surfing video. 3 Chapters video coming on 05.13.13 / 05.27.13 / 06.10.13. by FOCUS FL PRODUCTIONS