Is it possible to wakeboard behind a pontoon boat? I know I can get up behind one but how's the wake? I can't seem to find any photos or videos of a pontoon wake. I'm going on a trip in a couple weeks and we are renting a pontoon boat and I'm wondering if I should bring my board or not. Am I gonna be limited to surface tricks and ollies or what?
NOT! unless you are just learning to ride then it wont really matter... if you expect to get any air or plan on doing anything other than carving around don't bother
Yeah you can. In fact I did a photo shoot for premier pontoons a few years back, they are actually put Tower on it. In fact as I recall they had set-up so that you could reverse the bildge and it would flll the pontoons up as balast. You could do hucked inverts behind it, the main thing was we had to ride like a 55 foot rope or something insanely short like that to make it work.
I learned how to get up on a tri-toon pontoon boat. it had a 150HP Johnson outboard on it. You mentioned that you are renting one???? Most of the ones that are for rent on my lake are boats with two pontoons and very small HP motors...more for fishing and partying more than water sports. They also have pontoons with an I/O 350 V8 in them. Those boats run pretty fast and sit deeper in the water...
So i guess it depends on what kind you are renting...
As for the wake, the ones i've ridden behind (with no tower or ballast) offer very small choppy wakes. In fact, my grandpas throws two small whitewash wakes on each side of the boat, even with long or short rope lengths.
surface tricks was about all i could do. of course i am not the greatest rider ha ha
The pontoon we are renting is supposed to have a 150HP outboard on it, so it should have plenty of power and speed. Sounds like I'm not going to be getting too much air off the wake. Maybe I'll bring my board just to do some surface tricks. I don't have a wakeskate, but that sounds fun. We'll have it loaded down with 12 people so maybe the wake will be better than nothing. I might just have to tow my wake boat with us on the trip, but I was trying to avoid that. Thanks for all the suggestions/help!!