2012 Tige Z3 Delivery Day

So the big day finally arrived. We accepted delivery of our new Z3 after the lake test this afternoon.

As much as we were both really excited and I was a bit worried I'd built up the expectations in my head too much, so far I'm pleasantly surprised.

We had the boat out for about an hour on the water today with the dealer for the "orientation", which after owning a Tige for the last 11 years was a bit of a formality, but we learned a thing or two that we'd have had trouble figuring out otherwise. Mostly about operating the Tige Touch. As usual John from Hyperactive was phenomenal, and as jaded and level-headed as ever . I don't know how he survives doing several deliveries a day this time of year with new owners that are so excited. I guess when you deliver this many boats it becomes trivial. The delivery itself was perfect and professional. When we arrived, the boat was on the lift ready for us and even though John got stuck in traffic and ran a little late meeting us, he called to tell us to take it out for a spin and pick him up at the dock when he arrived.

After following Ragboy's write-up on the stock pro-ballast surf setup, we were able to get a pretty darn good looking surf wave on the first try. If I'd known the water would have been a balmy 62F I would have brought my surfboard back from the lake and given it a shot.

Our biggest anxiety was over what the wakeboard wake would look like. I added a preset for myself on the Tige You setup with speed @ 23mph, ballast at 50% all the way around and TAPS at 5, based solely on the setup of our old 21V RE. The wake looked incredible. We of course tried it again with the ballast full and it looked just gnarly. Expect more pics through the weekend and a full write-up on the wakeboard wake and performance. IDK what the water temperature is in Idaho but I'm trying this wake...

Both Dad and I were pretty surprised at how different it felt to drive the boat over our '01 21V RE. It felt like going from driving a porche where you could feel EVERYTHING, to driving an Audi with all the luxury options. Everything was smooth and solid and luxurious. It was nice but it's going to take some adjustment time to feel comfortable. Both of us were having a hell of a time "feeling" when the boat was in or out of gear at idle. After the palpable "clunk" we were used to, this was almost too silky smooth.

The lake was pretty calm for our test so we didn't get much of a feel for how the bigger boat would handle rougher water. This is a big concern since the boat spends all it's time on a VERY large lake that can get pretty rough very fast in a storm. We did get a little surprise however. I was testing how well the boat handled at wakeboard speed with the ballast full and doing double up turns. Our old boat had a tendency to naturally bleed a lot of speed in the turn and then the perfect pass would try to overcompensate pulling the rider through the double up at 1-3 mph faster that they wanted.

The Z3 did a better job of controlling the throttle coming out of the turn, even though I did a bit too tight a turn. What really shocked us was when we were all looking behind us to see how big the double up looked, we noticed something was very wrong. There was something missing from the double-ups we were used to on the old boat. It was customary to feel three large "whacks" as we crossed our own wake coming into the double up. With the Z3, we felt nothing. I mean NOTHING. It was so much bigger and heavier, it split our own rollers like they were butter.

I of course had the camera on hand to take some pics of the boat in it's finished state so with no further ado, the pictures...

Please excuse the watermarks after the water test as we were trying to get home in time to beat the storm that looked like it was coming. Since we're towing the boat to the lake tomorrow for the long weekend we'll have plenty more dirt to clean off at the lake.

Notice the $*#t eating grin on my father's face. He's the VERY proud new owner of this beauty. It's days like this I'm glad I'm close with my family.