Wakesurfing News

In wakesurfing, we don’t really have obstacles at all. We’ve had this winch that we have used to pull folks up on a Flyboy Wakesurf board, but mostly that was just going really really fast! It was fun to carve and such, but we had never hit any form of obstacle with a Flyboy Wakesurf board.

Our buddy, Sheldon, recently dug out his backyard!!!! and added a winching pond. Mostly, of course, for wakeskates and wakeboards, but we always knew that a Flyboy Wakesurf board could hit a rail and survive, and we wanted to demonstrate that! Plus how nuts is that? We are all about crazy!

Now, rails when you hit them at winching speeds are pretty abusive to wakesurf boards. Heck they’re abusive to wakeboards too! The winch is a lawnmower sized engine and a huge spool that wraps somewhere in teh area of 1,000 feet of wakeboard rope and a handle. So as the line starts winding up, you’re traveling at wakeboard speeds! Hitting a solid wood rail at that speed is pretty rough on a wakesurf board, to say the least. Heck, let’s just call it wjat it is: ABUSIVE!

So of course we had to try that!

When James got the invite to help test out Sheldon’s new pond, and put a rail in we sent him off with a Flyboy Wakesurf board and also instructions to get pictures!

We captioned this picture: Winch? Check. Wetsuit? Check. Wakeskate? Check. Flyboy? Wait…what?

A wakesurf board at speed is NOTHING like a wakeskate at speed. Plus, you’ll note in the picture that we removed the fins. At $70 a pop we didn’t want to break them! Anyway, when ridden finless the Flyboy Wakesurf board lacks something…like control! Anyway, James Walker was crazy enough to give it a shot.

Right? Isn’t that the best water you’ve ever seen?

Sinking the supports for the rail!

James Walker is an amazingly talented rider with a well rounded background in board sports. He was able to successfully coax the Flyboy Wakesurf board up and on to the rail.

We super-sized that picture so that you can see some of the details of the Flyboy Wakesurf board on the rail.

The expression on James face is priceless! Definately not the easiest thing to hit a rail with, but the point being, it handles abusive treatment. We would never suggest that you use a Flyboy Wakesurf board as your main rail weapon. Instead, we wanted to demonstrate the durability of the Flyboy Wakesurf board construction. Indestructible? No, but with reasonable care and if you aren’t on a mission to destroy it, it sure holds up well. Care for your wakesurf boards and they’ll give you many years of service, especially the composite sandwich construction used in the Flyboy Wakesurf board…stands up to hitting rails like a wakeskate, welllllll, at least in the short run.

When we get the board back, we’ll post up pictures of the bottom for your inspection.

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

Technorati Tags: flyboy wakesurf, James Walker, wakesurf board

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Bri Chmel 2012 Wakesurf Season Video

This is the video that I edited of my 2012 wakesurf season... the best season yet! I wakesurfed the most I've ever wakesurfed on my 2013 Centurion Enzo 244+ ...

Gone Surfin

Rivermates Surfclub Salzkammergut out for a nice riversurf session on january 6th 2013 at the Traun / Salzkammergut / Austria with epic water-level due to heavy…

Last week was such a crazy week, with so much going on! Sponsorship deals for James Walker and then first test rides, we couldn’t quite get everything in! One of the things we left out was testing that old wakesurf board that we had made something like 4 years ago that was principally flat, without contours and with a fairly shallow rocker.

You may remember that we discussed the two schools of thought regarding bottom shapes; one being that bottom shapes don’t mean squat, that flat is the fastest and all of the shaping increases stiffness and reduces rocker and THAT is what impacts speed. The other school of thought is; of course they channel water and impact flow and therefore improve speed.

So we took an old wakesurf board that was principally flat on the bottom and refreshed our memories!

What did we find in those competing theories? It was pretty interesting, refer back to that picture above for a moment and look at the water coming off the outside rail. You can see two sort of segmented flows. The first towards the back of the board that is flowing UP like a rooster tail and then just in front of that sort of under the ridres front foot you can see water escaping out and away from the wakesurf board.  That second segement has a rather flat trajectory.

Much of the talk about the benefits of channels and concaves rely upon concepts that require a closed system. A closed system would be something like your garden hose, there is no way for the water to escape out the sides, it has to run down the length of the hose and out the end. So placing your finger over the end of the hose will impact the flow out of that closed system.  That’s the concept, that water is forced into channels or concaves because it can’t escape.

Do we have a closed system on the bottom of a wake surf board? No way in hell! So what happens with all of those theories about squeezing water through slots and the like? Total garbage, sort of. The underlying theories of water channeling and being squeezed just don’t hold water (sorry we had to). Water is lazy and will simply find the easiest way out and that isn’t in a channel or down a concave, except in the instance where that is actually the easiest way out!  So, that water that is shooting out the side of the wakesurf board in the picture…that was the easiest way for it to escape.

So if existing the backside of a channel is the easiest way out, that’s where the flow will go, but not because it’s trapped or being forced through, by some form of induction or venturi principle. Would water flow in that same direction if the wakesurf board didn’t have a channel or concave? Yeah, most likely and the deviation between the two is probably not that significant.

So does a channel or concave help in channelling water? Umm, sure sort of. Would the flow be the same without the channel and concave, yeah pretty much.

So flat is fast. Is it remarkably faster than anything with a bottom shape? No, but it’s fast, without a doubt.

Are flatter rockers fastest? Yeah, this is definately accurate, there is no doubt that a flatter rocker develops the greatest down-the-line speed. At least in terms of concaves, the flattening out of the effective rocker is probably the single most effective part of that design. But there is also something to be said for the stiffening effect that the concave offers.

Each of the bottom shapes offers other attributes though. On thicker wakesurf boards, concaves and channels can reduce volume and make it easier to sink that area of the wakesurf board. There are all manner of changes in handling that bottom shaping impacts, plus the increase in stiffening.

So that was definately a worthwhile exercise and it gave us a fresh perspective on just exactly what our bottom shapes are doing behind the boat!

Thanks so much for following along, we have a new concave deck wakesurf board that we’ll be introducing this week, we’re not quite sure which day but be sure to check back for the first glimpses.  Plus we want to springboard off this research into a new skimmer build that James Walker will be wakesurfing.

Technorati Tags: James Walker wakesurfing, wakesurf board

NSP Surf Expo '13

Chris Chamberlain, global brand manager of NSP, talks about the rise of SUP for the inland market and also reviews the new line of NSP SUP boards for 2013.

We wakesurf in Northern California and while it gets cold here in the winter, we typically never get snow down here in the valley. We have a few times over the years, but it’s always freakishly bizarre and not a common occurance. This winter, though, has been really cold. We have seen standing water from all the rains freezing overnight and the cold snap has remained pretty consistent for what seems like months now.

What that does for our lakes is make them SUPER COLD! Not like folks get in the mid-west or northern states, but when we went out this last weekend we had air temps hovering at 50 and water temps just under that! It was not really conduscive to pushing hard, because you didn’t want to fall!

We thought we’d share some frosty pictures of James Walker wakesurfing his Flyboy Wakesurf board and then a short unedited video of one session.

Now here is the unedited video clip of James Walker wakesurfing his ’13 prototype Flyboy Wakesurfer

If you prefer to watch James Walker wakesurfing his wakesurf board on your Youtube console, just click on the link.

Hopefully, we’ll have some first ride videos and picture of the production Big Boy Flyboy, soon.

Thanks so much for following along, we appreciate it.

Technorati Tags: Big boy Flyboy, James Walker, James Walker wakesurfing, Wakesurfing