Wake ??????

We have a 18 ft sea ray w/ a 135 merc outboard motor set up w/ a fly high pole my question is this.....I pull my son at about 18 mph w/ a 200 lb sack in order to get a decent wake. The wake seems very spread apart! He can clear them going wake to wake just wondering if i can do anything differant (I Know I should buy a real wakeboard boat) when hes trying 360s and back rolls. Thanks in advance for your imput

I used to pull my son at 19 and had the same wake issue but then I actually sped up to 22.4 (the benefit of perfect pass) and the wake got much tighter and steeper and he progressed much faster. I think you can actually pull someone too slow.

Agreed, 18 is a bit slow. If speeding up kills the wake maybe you could shorten the rope a bit.

Seems to not have much of a wake there at faster speed? Would more weight help??

Experiment with your trim a bit as well

We already run the rope short???

Done the trimm thing When you wakeboard behind a real boat!!!! What speed???? Rope lengh????

Get a foil for the lower unit.

More weight in the front I/O's tend to get really bow high if you weight the back.

Kevin, When I had my I/O 18' I had a fat sac in the ski locker and a sand bag under the front seat in the bow and bench seat in the back. The sand bags were at least 50lbs. ea. With that-4-5 people, gear coolers, etc. we would run about 19-20 and trim it up as hi as we could before porpoising the bow. I did not have fins on the outdirve but that may have helped. I also only ran a 3 blade prop. From my experience, the wake on your boat will be spread apart and there is not a whole lot you can do about it. Faster speeds = narrow smaller wake slow speed = bigger wider wake, you just have to find a happy medium.

Here is our setup:


2005 Ebbtide Campione 210
540 and 250 in ski locker and another 250 up front.
an 18 pitch 4 blade prop

I ride at 22-23 MPH and 70' most of the time and the wake is perfect!

I have a 2000 18ft sea ray with a 750lb bag in between seats in back and a 560 in the front and with 3 people in the boat the wake is good with 70ft rope and about 21-22mph.

Thank you all for your help!! We will try to weight it down some and speed it up a little this weekend