Epic Boat Review

This weekend I was at the Walled Lake Wake Tournament and I got the chance to ride behind an Epic boat, and thought I would share my experience with the Wakeworld community.

First for a little background: I normally ride behind and 88 ski Nautique with about 2500 lbs of ballast. I like a steep wake. The board I was riding was a 142 Recoil.

The Epic comes stock with 4000 lbs of ballast, and we put about another 1000lbs in the boat and had about 6 people in it.

The first thing I noticed when riding was how fast the boat got up on plane. With that much weight in the boat I was expecting to be playing in the white wash for a long time.

The wake on this boat was sick! It is a very steep wake and huge. I was a little bit worried about how narrow it looked but since it pops you straight up, it wasn’t a problem at all. The wake was also really well mannered. The lip was really clean and there was no white wash where I was riding (80 or 85 feet). Even when the weight in the boat was off balanced the wake didn’t wash out as bad as I would have expected it to.

While riding I couldn’t get over how awesome the wake was. I love to feel a strong kick off the top of the wake, and this wake had a ton of kick. I was poping some of the biggest, loftiest spins, it felt like I had forever to hold the grabs.

The interior of the boat is nice, typical v-drive configuration. There was plenty of storage in the v-driver compartments and under the seats. It was a little lacking in bow storage and the bow of the boat itself is really small. It’s nice for driving because there isn’t a large bow blocking your view and we never once got close to dipping the nose, but there is only enough space for two people.

The only thing that I really didn’t like about the boat was the throttle. It was more like an I/O throttle than a ski boat. When driving I didn’t feel like I could make small adjustments to the speed, or give it more power in a turn while using perfect pass. With that said the perfect pass unit does a good job of holding speed while driving, and the dash configuration is well laid out.

Overall I was really impressed with the Epic. The wake was sick for sure and the 8.1 liter Volvo gets the boat up on plane in a hurry and surprising wasn’t too hard on gas. I thought for sure we would have gone through more gas. If you get the chance to ride behind this boat I would definitely not pass it by, you will be glad you did.

Let me know if you have any questions about my experience on the Epic.