A few weeks ago I posted a thread titled ¡§A Gathering Storm¡¨, I had no idea how accurate a statement that was going to be, we gathered and the weather stormed. Some surfers called and canceled because forecasted weather was pretty severe, even so about fourteen of us still made it to the gathering at Morse Lake just north of Indianapolis. The weather conditions kept everyone else off the lake, it was a bit cool and windy but otherwise conditions we¡¦re awesomeƒº
We started out with 6 goofy riders in a Nuatique, only three regular riders in the Mighty Centurion, and the More Lake Malibu dealership was wakesurfing/demoing a 247. We started by trying to build a spine wake, but the wake shape the Naitie and my Lighting didn¡¦t match well at the same speeds so we set the boats out to separate parts of the lake to surf.
After riding from 10:00 AM until about 12:30 I asked Jac if he could check the weather on his cell phone, isn¡¦t technology great! It didn¡¦t look good so we stole in to a vacant covered slip at the marina and went in to Wolfie¡¦s for lunch. After a bit the goofy riders pulled up and met us at Wolfie¡¦s and we gathered a few other riders. I had my laptop with me and played the Scioto Wakefest videos and I played an Inland Surfer DVD that Lou Pastore brought (Lou¡¦s is looking into reping for Inland Surfer in the Midwest). Jac checked the weather radar again and we headed back out on to the lake.
On the second set a second Nautie joined us, both Nauties worked on making a spine wake a second time. Our success with building a spine wake was kind of poor, I¡¦m not sure it¡¦s worth the time when you have a lot of riders. Our second set ran until about 7:30 PM. After we wiped my boat down we went to Eric¡¦s, had a few drinks and hung out around a bonfire.
I think everyone enjoyed the gathering concept. Competitions are cool too but we had much more riding time at the gathering than you¡¦d get at a competition. Scott and I are talking about running maybe two gatherings and two competitions between Ohio and Indiana next year.
One of the coolest things about the gathering was board swaping and the demo boards that the leading wakesurf board manufactures sent out for use to ride: Trick Boardz, The Walker Project, Shread Stixx, and Inland Surfer. Here¡¦s a list of the boards that I recall; I all of them except my own Broadcast, Red, and Mojo:
The Walker Project F18 Demo
Shred Stixx Extreme Demo
Trick Boardz Mojo Mine
Trick Boardz Skim Skate Scott¡¦s
Trick Boardz Velocity Demo
Trick Boardz Free style Demo
Hyperlight Broadcast 5.6 Mine
Hyperlight Landlock Dave W¡¦s
Inland Surfer Red Mine
Inland Surfer Blue Scott¡¦s
Inland Surfer Yellow Yellow Demo
Ed Sullivan Skim That Mine
Bryon Greene with Wakeboard Midwest came out to ride with us and take pictures. He¡¦ll post his pictures on his web site at:
http://www.wakeboardmidwest.com/ Here are some of my pictures.
The Lightning Loaded for boards
A very gray day
The 10:00 AM crew
The Nautie
The Lightning Nautie spine?
Me on the Shred Stixx
I ran over 200 lbs of Ballast
JAc on the Yellow
Surfing behind the Nautie
Jac had a good Skim That run
Yup it's plywood
A little belly surfing
Linear Mode
