Wakesurf -Vintage Euros and Sunsetters

[Arctic Slalom]

so i bought a '08 hyperlite broadcast 5'-6" surfer a few days ago.

on saturday we had a crowd in the boat and a couple were able to go ropeless. wow, it's really addicting!!!

we put 11 hours on the boat motor on saturday alone! and that only included a small about of wakeboarding and a hour long booze cruise satuday night.

anyway, we had (6) adults in the boat; (4) 200 lb. guys and (2) ladies plus my (2) kids.....prolly about 1500 lbs. total with cooler and stuff.

any thoughts from others with the same hull about weight and speed while surfing? We were going roughly 11 mph @ 2000 RPM's....any faster and the wake just gets really steep and very hard to ride (novice).

it makes a huge difference from 8 mph as compared to 12 mph. at 8 it's so much mellower and flares much wider from the back of the boat. at 12 mph it seems to get really steep and almost to fast (really tough for me to stay in the sweet spot). once you get out of the tunnel (forward) you end up diving the nose...almost like falling down a half pipe.

i'm thinking we need a bit more weight and need to slow down more? more bow weight? maybe I need to turn the boat slightly when surfing? maybe we need to 'pump' the wake more? maybe I need to lose 30 lbs.?

any thoughts?

i'll post some photos of the wake tonight...

[martinarcher]

Cool. I'd be interested I seeing your wake. We have had a crew of 5 on the boat and two 500lb sacs in the shape of an L in the rear port side of the boat. The wave isn't too bad and we could get just a bit of slack in the rope using wakeboards without bindings. Last Wed My CWB Ride surfboard arrived. Too bad we had crappy weather all weekend and I didn't get a chance to try it out. I started running hose for my automated ballast system. I have a bow sac to tuck up under the bow to play with weight up front. I think it might lengthen our pocket a bit. Right now it is pretty steep, but very short and close to the swim platform. We have found that right around 11 mph gives you the best wave as well (I use the GPS app on my phone). It gets steeper at 12, but too hard to keep up with. We haven't been able to go ropeless yet, but I'm hoping with the new board we can get there! Its fun just messing around on the wakeboard.

[Arctic Slalom]

i was worried that we'd never be able to drop the rope....but the broadcast has been really, really fun. even newbies have had a blast on it. i love it; bought it at The House Board Shop in St. Paul.

only a couple of us could drop the rope. my younger bro, about 40 lbs. lighter than me (175), got the hang of it right away....threw the rope in on his third ride!!!

i'm taking the board out to a friends Moomba Mobius LSV this weekend.....should be a riot:Clap:.

with the SS we can stack a few more in the bow, but I think you'll easily be able to surf with the skier .

you're right about the pocket not being very long.....maybe my board is big? maybe i'm just a beginner? will bow weight and slowing down lengthen the pocket...hope so?!

yes, we are really close to the boat, like scary close at times.....

[martinarcher]

i was worried that we'd never be able to drop the rope....but the broadcast has been really, really fun. even newbies have had a blast on it. i love it; bought it at The House Board Shop in St. Paul.

only a couple of us could drop the rope. my younger bro, about 40 lbs. lighter than me (175), got the hang of it right away....threw the rope in on his third ride!!!

i'm taking the board out to a friends Moomba Mobius LSV this weekend.....should be a riot:Clap:.

with the SS we can stack a few more in the bow, but I think you'll easily be able to surf with the skier .

you're right about the pocket not being very long.....maybe my board is big? maybe i'm just a beginner? will bow weight and slowing down lengthen the pocket...hope so?!

yes, we are really close to the boat, like scary close at times.....

I know what you mean. I feel like I could step off the board onto to teak deck. I have done a lot of reading about how weight affects the pocket and it seems like adding bow weight will lengthen the pocket, but take a little bit of the height off the wave. I started hacking into my boat last night. I got my two intake pumps in and tapped into the raw water intake. Wed night I will start running the plumbing to the bags. With a 1200lb bow sac under the front of the boat I should have way more weight than i will ever need to play with. I can't wait to go ropeless!

[Arctic Slalom]

1200 lbs in the front!!! whoa....better drive that with some caution!!! i'm thinking you'll only be running that half full or so?

i'd like to see how you have it all plumbed in...

the slalom skier in me seems to be slipping away more every day.

last year there was no way I was gonna install a tower....now I'm thinking about a tower, board racks, more ballast for surfing.....the train is coming off the tracks!

oh well! it's all fun

that F-250 of yours is really cool. i restored a 3/4 ton '77 GMC 4x4 w/ 400 CU engine several years ago on our farm. it's still sitting there waiting for me to use it.

CR

[martinarcher]

Oh yeah - 1200lbs will never be in the front of our boat. I think we'll start with around 300lbs up front and go from there. Who knows maybe you could get the prop out of the water for an on the lake prop change with 1200lbs of bow weight in that little boat.

I'll have to take some pics as I plumb everything in and share them. So far I have a 1 1/4" T in the raw water pump line and that goes through a 1 1/4" ball valve and one way valve. It then Y's into two 1200 GPH Tsunami pumps. One will run the front bag and one will T to each rear bag. Hopefully I'll get the plumbing to the bags done tonight. You run out of room between the rudder and engine pretty quick!

Edited June 24, 2009 by martinarcher

[JasonK]

We've weighted the hell out of my boat before, but the wake just doesn't get that big. I hope you're not disappointed. We still surf a lot though. I'll be getting a new boat before I spend money on ballast plumbing for this one.

[Deke]

i was worried that we'd never be able to drop the rope....

...only a couple of us could drop the rope. my younger bro, about 40 lbs. lighter than me (175), got the hang of it right away....threw the rope in on his third ride!!!

...you're right about the pocket not being very long.....maybe my board is big? maybe i'm just a beginner? will bow weight and slowing down lengthen the pocket...hope so?!

yes, we are really close to the boat, like scary close at times.....

I can get ropeless on my ResponseLX... barely. Watch out when weighting the boat that the fuel vent isn't in a place that will go underwater... been there. Anyway, on our little boat, the pocket is right at the platform and sometimes you'll ride up on it. Slower=mushy and tall. Faster=clean, short, and long. In our case we just have to get the speed to where the board can keep up and the driver may need to vary slightly if they are losing the surfer. We use a regular 6' surfboard, which is not really fast enough due to relatively soft rails and is a bit too long to fit into our tiny pocket. Not much you can due besides try to stay trimmed and not lose the wave, then pump your butt off when you are losing it. Would love something with as much buoyancy but a faster design.

[Ndawg12]

Cool. I'd be interested I seeing your wake. We have had a crew of 5 on the boat and two 500lb sacs in the shape of an L in the rear port side of the boat. The wave isn't too bad and we could get just a bit of slack in the rope using wakeboards without bindings. Last Wed My CWB Ride surfboard arrived. Too bad we had crappy weather all weekend and I didn't get a chance to try it out. I started running hose for my automated ballast system. I have a bow sac to tuck up under the bow to play with weight up front. I think it might lengthen our pocket a bit. Right now it is pretty steep, but very short and close to the swim platform. We have found that right around 11 mph gives you the best wave as well (I use the GPS app on my phone). It gets steeper at 12, but too hard to keep up with. We haven't been able to go ropeless yet, but I'm hoping with the new board we can get there! Its fun just messing around on the wakeboard.

Wait a second, you can surf on a wake board by taking off the bindings??!! What about the fins, do you take them off too. How do you start off??

[Arctic Slalom]

We've weighted the hell out of my boat before, but the wake just doesn't get that big. I hope you're not disappointed. We still surf a lot though. I'll be getting a new boat before I spend money on ballast plumbing for this one.

i hear ya jason; I don't think the fisherman agree with you though.....even when we avoid everyone I feel like I'm gonna get a jointed RAPALA in the neck!!!

off to scottdale, AZ next summer (for one year)...and when we get back it's V-drive/tower/board racks/sac time.... i feel like i'm betraying my slalom ski saying that.

i think I just might keep my old sunsetter....forever (do i want to keep up two boats, though?) it's in mint shape, paid for, and prolly worth more to me than the market will drive.....we'll see.

[martinarcher]

We've weighted the hell out of my boat before, but the wake just doesn't get that big. I hope you're not disappointed. We still surf a lot though. I'll be getting a new boat before I spend money on ballast plumbing for this one.

I just want to go ropeless. If I can do that I'll be smiling!

[martinarcher]

Cool. I'd be interested I seeing your wake. We have had a crew of 5 on the boat and two 500lb sacs in the shape of an L in the rear port side of the boat. The wave isn't too bad and we could get just a bit of slack in the rope using wakeboards without bindings. Last Wed My CWB Ride surfboard arrived. Too bad we had crappy weather all weekend and I didn't get a chance to try it out. I started running hose for my automated ballast system. I have a bow sac to tuck up under the bow to play with weight up front. I think it might lengthen our pocket a bit. Right now it is pretty steep, but very short and close to the swim platform. We have found that right around 11 mph gives you the best wave as well (I use the GPS app on my phone). It gets steeper at 12, but too hard to keep up with. We haven't been able to go ropeless yet, but I'm hoping with the new board we can get there! Its fun just messing around on the wakeboard.

Wait a second, you can surf on a wake board by taking off the bindings??!! What about the fins, do you take them off too. How do you start off??

Sure. I just wanted to get the feeling. I just have the board floating on the water with my heels on top about where they will end up while riding. I then have the driver put the boat in gear and begin trolling. This will force the board to flip up onto your feet and be held there by the water pressure. Then I just have the boat give me a slower version of a wakeboard start. I get up just like I do on the board normally. We then slow the boat to 11mph and play on the wave. The downside is the wakeboard isn't large enough for our wave. Hopefully the CWB Ride sitting in the livingroom will keep up.

[martinarcher]

We've weighted the hell out of my boat before, but the wake just doesn't get that big. I hope you're not disappointed. We still surf a lot though. I'll be getting a new boat before I spend money on ballast plumbing for this one.

i hear ya jason; I don't think the fisherman agree with you though.....even when we avoid everyone I feel like I'm gonna get a jointed RAPALA in the neck!!!

off to scottdale, AZ next summer (for one year)...and when we get back it's V-drive/tower/board racks/sac time.... i feel like i'm betraying my slalom ski saying that.

i think I just might keep my old sunsetter....forever (do i want to keep up two boats, though?) it's in mint shape, paid for, and prolly worth more to me than the market will drive.....we'll see.

I hear you. My buddy is a fisherman and has told stories of throwing lures at jetskis and ski boats. I tell him if he doesn't like wakes, to fish in the no wake zones. We have kind of agreed to disagree on how to use the lake.

[martinarcher]

We have ropeless success!

Well I got the automatic ballast system finished this morning (took a day off to finish it this morning and go boating this afternoon). I have been working on it for about 4 solid days and have about 90ft of 1 inch clear tuning in the boat now. It turned out good and works well. I'll have to throw a thread up in the ballast info section with some pics of my set-up if anyone is interested. I haven't taken any pics yet, but I always take pics of all my fun projects.

The best surf set-up we had tonight was the two fly high V drive sacs in an L shape in the back right corner of the boat. I believe they are 500lbs a piece. With me in the water riding, we had three people left in the boat. One sitting on the left rear on the sacs, one up front on the passenger side (my wife at a hefty 90lbs) and the driver. I started with about 400lbs in the bow and went ropeless for about 2 minutes. I am still very new to surfing so I learned an awful lot about weight distribution on the board and how much it affects your speed in regard to the boat. I then drained about 200 lbs of water from the bow. The wave gained a bit of height, but looked like it was a bit shorter in length, still ropless, but it seemed easier to let go (about 10.5mph). We then dumped all the water out of the bow and increased the speed to 12mph. The pocket became about 3 times as long. I rode about 5-6 minutes ropeless and was able to add weight to the back of the board and get about a board and a half back from the platform instead of riding up by the platform. If I felt like the boat was pulling away I could lean into the wave and toward the boat (weight on front foot) and it would slowly pull me ahead back up to the boat. I couldn't believe how fast you could catch the boat and was glad I had the MalibuCrew transom protector on since I bumped into the boat a few times! Weight on the toes is a huge tip for helping to ride ropeless.

This surfing thing is addicting!

Oh I forgot the board - its a CWB Ride - so far I love it!

Edited June 27, 2009 by martinarcher

[martinarcher]

My buddy emailed me the pics from yesterday's outing. Here's the wave off our little Skier. He is sitting in the backseat so he is really close to me while surfing. My face shows the excitement of being able to drop the rope! These are at 12mph with the weight as described in the post above.

Edited June 28, 2009 by martinarcher

[Arctic Slalom]

m,

it looks like you're having a great time.....i've been going ropeless on our '89 sunsetter too. It's a blast. she's barely got enough to push my 225 lb. carcass down the tunnel!!!

it's fun to accelerate and brake with your back feet!

....we put another 16 hours on the boat last week. the $2.38 gas has been a treat!

I'd sure like to see some photos of your ballast system plumbing, etc! I might just have to do that to mine.

later,

CR

Edited July 8, 2009 by Arctic Slalom