1994 Prostar 205

Basically I'm poor so I have to have an older boat ('94 prostar 205) I really love wakeboarding and probably wont be able to afford an actual wake boat until I'm 50. What can I do with my boat to get more wake or do I really need it. I put a 1200 lbs fat seat in the back and my wake seamed smaller. Is there a perfect weight to use?

I imagine there are many on this site that would like to give you a swift kick to the juevos for saying that boat is not an actual wake boat.

I have a '98 PS 205 that throws a fantastic wake. Start off with 400lbs on each side of the engine and 380 in the walk way in the bow. I don't know about the '94 model, but my '98 does not have a ski locker, so the front fat sack also sits on the floor. I use fly high V drive sacks for the back two next to the engine and a Flyhigh 380 in the front.

Ive never rode on one of the newer wake boats so I really dont know what the wake should be like. I can come up next to the newer Supra's and Moomba's ect. And my wake actually looks bigger than theirs. But It could be just the angle im at looking. They are just jumping higher, further, and looks like they are not even trying. I do have a ski locker.

The 205 makes a great wake, I wouldn't hate on that boat at all. Alot of people on this site would still be riding behind one if it had more room inside. Read up on how to sack it out and I doubt you will have any complaints about the wake, unless people are saying it is too big.

(Message edited by srh00z on July 21, 2008)

where can I read on how to sack it out?

350 in the front, 400 on each side of engine, 500 in the back, might have to move 400's up or back to tweak wake the way you want it. Let a little weight out, or in to get it just right. Use a 30 lb. iron weight to shift around for any minor adjustments.

That wont break my boat?

Go a little lighter if your freaked out. My buddy has that exact set-up in his 205, and the wake is huge, perfect shape.

Cool I will try it this weekend

If you can get a hold of any hard weights, they work better(elevator weights),lead,etc... water moves around, and is harder to keep consistent.

Did not think of that I could probably hide it better for more room also

Exactly, more room, easier to move weight around to get wake just how you want it. Only problem, if you're trailering your boat, make sure your trailer can handle the extra weight. If you have it in a lift or slip, you're good to go, saves time, and don't have to fight pumps, and your boat stays drier.

ha-ha, becareful with the hard weights. remember water floats, lead don't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTORp58DZsU

A filled fatsac does not float! If your boat's going down, it's going down!!

Before loading up that much weight you might also check the pitch of the prop. You will probably have to upgrade. That much weight with the wrong prop and you may never get on plan.

I am going to have to disagree with headhunter and agree with tj. Most of the boats these days are made to float at the rubrail even if they get swamped. With a bunch of led it will sink the boat to the bottom of the lake.

Just for fun lets do an experiment with Headhunters boat. We will try it both ways and see if either sink to the bottom.

How do you think a fatsac does not float?

(Message edited by polarbill on July 21, 2008)

I have a '92 PS205 which is the exact same hull. Were running three 540 sacks, one on each side of the motor box, and one in the front walk. The wake is pretty decent. If youve already got the fat seat, you might just want to even it out with a sack in the front walk. Experiment. Try the sack up front, and grab a few friends and try seating them in differnt locations around the boat to see what works best. If you dont have perfect pass yet, GET IT. It makes a HUGE difference in maintaining proper speed. Also, keep in mind that when you add weight, you usually have to bump up the speed to clean up the wake. If you dont lengthen the rope to compensate for teh faster speed, that might be why your wake seems smaller with the ballast.

Oh, and HH99, I dont exactly agree with that last bit. A fat sack may not provide floatation, but it is infinately better to have if youre boat gets swamped (as opposed to iron or lead). A filled sac will be neutral in water. Metal is gonna continue pulling you down right to the bottom.

I ran a 94 205 for several years with about 600 lbs of lead & steel (250 behind rear seat, 100 in the bow, 125 on each side), plus a 200 lb locker sack. It was a great boat & had a nice, medium sized wake. All the ballast was out of sight. And it wasn't so low in the water that we had a problem with taking water over the side or the sheriff/Coast Guard telling us to remove it. Plus if I had more than about 5 or 6 people in the boat, it would have a BIG wake, and still be manageable (even though it was probably overweight a bit).
Plus I trailered that weight occasionally. The tandem axle trailer never had any problems with it.

I think you guys can test this ballast theory pretty easily without the boat. Try throwing a lead brick overboard..... where does it go?
Now throw a fat sack overboard...... and fill it up. Where does it go?

I'd be interested in how long your engine lasts when weighting it down hh's style.

Propped right, it shouldnt be too bad. Stay on top of your maintenance, check and change your oil and filter regularly, and dont go around doing WOT blasts at every opportunity and it should last just as long with all the weight. IMO, maintenance and driving style make a bigger impact than 1.6K ballast.

A filled fatsac is not neutral in the water. Fill a water bottle up with water, put it in your sink full of water, it sinks. Only reason I know this, up in Missouri years back, an X-Star went down. When they salvaged it, 3 sacs still were in the boat. I was a skeptic, until the guys pulling up the boat said it was reason the boat totally submerged. Without them full, the boat probably wouldn't have gone down.

OK, im going to explain it to you scientifically, citing facts for you.

Afer a little bit of searching, I was able to find the specific density of PVC vinyl, which is .92 g /cm^2.

Water of course is 1g / cm^2.

The shipping weight of my two sacs I recently bought was 8 pounds, Very inaccurate, but it gives us a starting point. Regardless, we care about density, not overall weight. Density will scale.

Lets say that one fat sac weighs 4 pounds empty. That works out to be 1814 g. That makes for 1971 cc worth of vinyl.

Now the same 1971 cc volume of water weighs 1971 g.

That means that for the physical space the vinyl takes up, its actually 157 g lighter, or roughly a third of a pound.

Now lets fill the sac. 540 pounds is just about 245 KG which is also 245 Liters of water. Add that to the weight of the sack itself and you get 246.971 liters total, at a weight of 246.814 KG.

So here are the totals:
Fat sac filled to capacity: 246.814 KG (544.132 Lbs)
The same volume of pure water: 246.971 KG (544.478 Lbs)

As you can see, because the density of the vinyl is slightly less than water, they fat sac weighs slightly less than the water it displaces. Not nearly enough for it to float out of the water, but its enough for it to stay up near the surface of the water.

Now, Im fairly confident that proves my point to most people, however if youre still convinced that a fat sac is a sure fire ticket to send your boat down to the bottom, try this: The weight of the fat sack itself is less than 1% of the weight of a filled sack. The rest is water. Water in water is neutral. Even if the weight of the sac material itself was solid lead, its still only 4 pounds. Thats surely not enough to to make much difference in a boat going down.

There you go. Once a boat has been filled up with water to the point the sacks are submerged, the fat sacks are no longer 540 pounds of dead weight. Theyre essentially neutral, since theyre 99.2% pure water by volume, and 99.3% water by weight.

The most likely reason teh sacks were still in the recoverd boat was probably cause they were wedged in there or possibly even strapped down. If theyre wedged in against the sidewalls or walk through when the boat is on top of the water, theyre not gonna magically float away once it goes under.

Also, the salvage crew that claimed the sacks were the reason it went down, well they must have been referring to putting the boats water line down further, meaning it was more easily swamped by waves, or water coming in through a broken line on a thu hull fitting. If they really think thats the reason the boat went down to the bottom, then theyre simply mis-informed because these sacks sure seem heavy when theyre out of water.

(Message edited by GuitsBoy on July 21, 2008)

LOL, Nice.

Do you fill the sacks right up to the cap, or leave air in the top? would think that would help cut overall density as well.

Served Internet!!! Booyat Bass!!!

J/K

Internet style that is.

By HH99 (headhunter) on Monday, July 21, 2008: A filled fatsac is not neutral in the water. Fill a water bottle up with water, put it in your sink full of water, it sinks. Only reason I know this, up in Missouri years back, an X-Star went down. When they salvaged it, 3 sacs still were in the boat. I was a skeptic, until the guys pulling up the boat said it was reason the boat totally submerged. Without them full, the boat probably wouldn't have gone down.

Whatever your smokin, SHARE!

Like Tony explained, the only reason the sacks were to blame in the incident you describe is because the hull was low enough to take water over the gunnels. The water in the sacks had nothing to do with bringing it to the bottom.

I challenge you to throw a sack overboard & fill it. If it has a tiny bit of air in it, and 99% full of water, the sack will float. If you burp the air out of it, the sack will slowly sink. Then you will know 1st hand what happens.

Funny you have to be rude to get your points across. The filled sacs surely had something to do with the boat sinking. Whether it was the water swamping because of the added weight, or whatever, the boat still was submerged, and the 3 sacs were full.

Now you didnt specify, but I didnt think I was being terribly rude to you in the slightest.

Now, as long as the three sacks filled added up to be less than the rated capacity of the boat, theres no reason it should have taken on water. There must have been some other circumstance which we dont know about. The raw water hose may have come off. Maybe there was a storm. Maybe a vengeful neighbor ran a garden hose into the boat overnight. I dont know, but if it was under the rated capacity, it should never have been an issue.

Next, every boat over 20 feet in length is required to have positive buoyancy foam in the rails. This is so that if the boat does get swamped, the rails should still be up at the surface. The boat should only be partially submerged at worst.

If something were to pull the boat down to the bottom, it would have to overpower the flotation of the foam under the rails. As stated before, water weight would not be able to do this, so the fat sacks are not the cause of this. If it was indeed on the lake floor, my guess is that there was a considerable amount of lead weight in the boat as well as the sacks. Otherwise the rails would still have been above water.

As for why the sacs were still full, why wouldnt they be? What happens to a water balloon in a pool? It dosnt deflate does it? (at least not right away)

Anyway, There were circumstances at play here that we're not being told about. There was either a leak, or a storm, and the boat must have had enough metal weight (lead ballast or tools, equipment, etc) to overpower the foam under the rails. I think we've brought enough evidence to the table to prove that the sacs were not what brought this boat to the lake floor.

I'm sure there was other extenuating circumstances for the boat to totally submerge, there was no other weight in the boat.

Sorry HH, just trying to be funny..... or stupid...... or stupid funny.

The bottom line is that the story you told about doesn't give enough first hand info to back up the theory. Thats why I challenged you to try it for yourself. If you do it in shallow water there shouldn't be any loss or damage of any kind to your boat or your fat sack. Then you will know, first hand, what your referring to.

Try it with a 2 liter bottle plastic bottle. Fill the bottle 99% full, put the cap back on & throw it in. $10 says it floats. Now fill it all the way up, then throw it in. It will probably sink, but really slowly.

I used lead & steel in my 205 too, and for the same reasons you listed, it's out of the way & hidden. I think the trick is to not overdo it. Because one day your going to be in a situation where your boat is going to have to take some waves without sinking. And if it does, if you have a lot of lead/steel on board, that baby's goin to the bottom.

Just make sure your bilges are working good!

So really, how much is the Prostar RATED for? MY 87 Supra Sunsport is only rated to hold 8 people or 1400lbs.

I think my sticker says 1330 or 10 people. Those are some light people. Anyway, no problems running 1600 pounds of ballast and 4 or 5 people. You just have to watch how you drive. The nose will sink within a few inches of teh water line if you cut teh throttle quickly.

Always choose water weight over solid weight when you have a choice because the water weight becomes nuetral when submerged in water. Much safer. Simple physics. Nuff said.

David, did you get that boat from a guy named preston?

David- don't trip dude, you have picked out a great boat. Congrats, and as others have mentioned, just experiment with diff weight configurations to get the shape and size you want.

Sparky Jay (wake_upppp) on Monday, July 21, 2008 - Always choose water weight over solid weight when you have a choice because the water weight becomes nuetral when submerged in water. Much safer. Simple physics. Nuff said.

I'm not sure if you read just the first post and none of the rest or what. And what the hell is "Nuff"?

Water weight is great if you don't want your boat to sink to the bottom, I suppose. But frankly, if my boat sinks, it doesn't matter if it's to just below the surface or to the bottom of the deep blue sea, I don't want it anymore. The insurance company just earned it. The thing is going to have a world of problems, electrical issues, engine & transmission problems (if it's not hydrolocked already & has a cracked block), steering, etc.

I'm not sure if having lead on board will violate any insurance claims. I imagine what WILL violate a claim has to do with being overweight, and you can be overweight with fat sacks just as well as with lead.

The bottom line is be smart about it. Weight the boat to a reasonable degree. Don't over do it to the point that you can't bring the boat home safely everyday. The 205 is a sweet boat and can take 1000 or so lbs of weight if it's distributed throughout the boat right. Much more than that & I'd be sweatin every surfer's wake that came by me.

(Message edited by bill_airjunky on July 22, 2008)

Yes I got the boat from Preston

"Try it with a 2 liter bottle plastic bottle. Fill the bottle 99% full, put the cap back on & throw it in. $10 says it floats. Now fill it all the way up, then throw it in. It will probably sink, but really slowly."

Even a full bottle will float when capped, but not without one. In salt water anyway...

I've owned my my 94 205 for almost ten years. Its a sick boat 4 wakeboarding, plus old school isnt always a bad thing. I put 250 lbs in the front, and 2 400 lbs on the side of the engine in the back (it varies abit to on how many people i have). Ive ran that weight for ten years and she still runs strong. You will be able to learn every trick you can imagine behind that boat. Plus its always funny to see peoples faces when you throw down a huge session in an old boat!!!!