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Old     (lugwrench)      Join Date: Jul 2002       05-01-2006, 5:52 AM Reply   
So I’ve been noticing a lot of wake threads lately, ranging from pics, discussions, to how to threads. So I wanted to start a thread really dissecting what we’re doing with wakes and weighting. This may receive some bashing but I don’t care. Going against the grain here but has anyone stopped and thought that maybe we are over weighting boats? This isn’t a safety or legal discussion it’s to stop and think about is the 4000 pounds of extra ballast we’re adding really making the better wake. Is adding that 1000 pounds of lead to the nose really helping?

I ride behind pretty much the smallest boat in the towboat world. The Malibu Sportster LX. Direct drive open bow, but she’s small really meant for skiing. However, with a wedge and a 600 sack and a few friends it doesn’t do too badly. We started with just the wedge, and then added the 600 sack (who knows how much it really weighs) then recently we add a couple hundred pounds to the nose. We rode like that for about a week when we noticed the wake actually got smaller. Adding the 600 pounds to the rear sunk the rear end of the boat but adding the 200+ to the bow brought it back up. Took the weight out of the bow and now we’re back to our preferred wake. So that got me thinking, if that worked for me, it may work for some of you using 6000 pounds of ballast.

This is not a thread to get help “dialing” in my own wake. In fact, I’m not so sure of that term. I read all the time about how someone added 2k to the stern 1k to the bow but that made the wake mushy, so they had to add 1k to the walk way, which shortened up the transition so they had to put 5 hundo under each seat. So now they’re 5k overtop of the factory ballast and the boat handles like hell, needs a prop change and if we do a comparison against the same boat with maybe only 1000-2000 lbs it’s not a tremendous difference.

Maybe all of the arguments about some of the newest boats not being as good at producing wakes is because we’re sticking to our old school mentality of weighting while using the latest developments from our favorite boat companies. Maybe once we’ve added so much weight we’re negating some of the latest designs put into the hull that were there to help produce great wakes. I’ve read about people on this board who have never ridden their boat with just the factory ballast, the moment they got the boat they added a couple hundred pounds.

So I propose this. Any of you who are “dialing in” your wake with an extra couple tons of weight, strip it clean and start from scratch. Who cares about pictures, ride it, see what it’s like with only the factory ballast, who knows you may be impressed. I know all of us don’t have factory ballast (myself included) so start with your 1 bag or whatever, just start small and make small changes. Some of these boats we’re ridding just might have phenomenal wakes, but ironically enough we’re hiding it under too much weight.

I may be off of my rocker here but at the very least it’ll save you a little gas money.

b
Old    xtremebordgurl            05-01-2006, 7:36 AM Reply   
and with the price of gas it just mite be worth it!
Old     (thane_dogg)      Join Date: Jun 2002       05-01-2006, 7:42 AM Reply   
I will have to kind of agree with you there. The only way gas prices are going to go down is if the demand goes down, and adding more weight just means more gas. I will also say that I have grown accustomed to a really big wake.
Old     (loudontn)      Join Date: Feb 2005       05-01-2006, 8:28 AM Reply   
Wow, I never thought I'd hear it, "too much weight."

Old     (big_ed_x2)      Join Date: Jul 2004       05-01-2006, 8:58 AM Reply   
Blain

quote:

Is adding that 1000 pounds of lead to the nose really helping?




It helps with planing out.You cant just add weight in the stern.I think you just experience a certain type of wake(hull)that is already rampy so adding weight to the bow made it rampier and therefore looks smaller but I assure you it is not smaller and twice as hard.IMO



quote:

Maybe all of the arguments about some of the newest boats not being as good at producing wakes is because we’re sticking to our old school mentality of weighting while using the latest developments from our favorite boat companies. Maybe once we’ve added so much weight we’re negating some of the latest designs put into the hull that were there to help produce great wakes.



Not really sure you noticed but when the boat is moving,only the bottom of the hull is touching the surface of the water so I don't really agree with that statement.

Old     (lugwrench)      Join Date: Jul 2002       05-01-2006, 9:54 AM Reply   
Ed, the nose weight definitely made the wake smaller, I was not the only rider to note this.
Sure it helps the boat plane but again you are now bringing the back of the boat up. So couldn't you potentially remove weight from the back and yield the same result?

If so little of the boat is touching the water while driving why are wakes different from boat to boat? So you are saying hull design only matters when you plane? But after that it is negated?


(Message edited by lugwrench on May 01, 2006)
Old     (liquidmx)      Join Date: Jun 2005       05-01-2006, 10:00 AM Reply   
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH WEIGHT.. If I could afford It I would ride behind a 45ft cabin cruiser!
Old     (jarrod)      Join Date: May 2003       05-01-2006, 10:12 AM Reply   
"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH WEIGHT."
Sure there is.

"So couldn't you potentially remove weight from the back and yield the same result?"

Not necessarily. I ran into this problem in my malibu. Adding weight to the bow will in some cases make the wake smaller for the very reason you stated. For you it's all about finding the right balance for that boat.

Old     (toby_yeo)      Join Date: Feb 2006       05-01-2006, 10:24 AM Reply   
mikey marsh craked the hull of his boat because of to much weight
Old     (malibuboarder75)      Join Date: Jan 2004       05-01-2006, 10:35 AM Reply   
I run the wedge, 400lb sac, 100lbs of metal, and 3-4 people. I get a big enough wake to do whirly's, raleys, oa 5's. Wake is all mental. For me, riding a big wake screws up my riding because I am not used to it. I always throw my tricks to soon on a big wake. But with double ups, there is no end to the amount of tricks you can do. Any boat can throw a huge double up.
Old     (guido)      Join Date: Jul 2002       05-01-2006, 10:59 AM Reply   
Yeah, it's totally a matter of what you are used to. I love huge wakes. I like big, smooth, slow spins. I like really long grabs and I love the feeling of getting booted every time I hit the wake. I'm not saying that it's impossible to land tricks behind a smaller wake, but IMO it's just not as fun. I've gotten so spoiled that I hardly like riding behing a boat that I don't know the wake on.
Old     (garret_s)      Join Date: Apr 2006       05-01-2006, 11:55 AM Reply   
"Any boat can throw a huge double up."

Wrong. My old boat could not throw a double up, it was an IO, and the hull design slowed the boat down so much through the wake that It slacked my line.
Old     (jason_ssr)      Join Date: Apr 2001       05-01-2006, 12:03 PM Reply   
Having success off a wake has more to do with your fundamentals than it does the wake size. Bigger is easier because it doesnt require as much precision in your fundamentals.

But, you start building the size, and you start increasing the cost. And no matter how big you get, you always want bigger.

So the ultimate solution is to get to ride the biggest wake you have the guts to hit, with no gas cost at all!

http://www.aclproductions.com/videos/Dre%20Mobe.mov

And if you cant find a wake, you dont really need one!

http://www.aclproductions.com/videos/moe_sbend_blind.mov

Can be as slow and smooth or as fast and hucked as you want!
Old     (big_ed_x2)      Join Date: Jul 2004       05-01-2006, 12:03 PM Reply   

quote:

So couldn't you potentially remove weight from the back and yield the same result?


NO,same shape not same size.


quote:

If so little of the boat is touching the water while driving why are wakes different from boat to boat? So you are saying hull design only matters when you plane? But after that it is negated?


1)Different bottoms!
2)for a wake,YES for surfing,NO
3)what is negated??



Old     (lugwrench)      Join Date: Jul 2002       05-01-2006, 12:21 PM Reply   
I guess we are just disagreeing on terminology Ed. You say the bottom is different, to me that is just hull shape.

I think with any tow boat there is never enough of the boat out of the water at any speed to discount hull shape and characteristics. I regularly slalom ski (can I say that here?). My Sportster throws an awesome slalom wake (nice light boat, shallow draft) I also regularly ski behind my friends Response LXi (Malibu tournament ski boat). At 36 mph our wake size is almost exactly the same except his is softer and obviously the boats are un-weighted. Would that not be because of a different hull between the two boats?
Old     (stephan)      Join Date: Nov 2002       05-01-2006, 12:39 PM Reply   
Sorry Garrett, it sounds like you need to learn how to drive a wider double up, give yourself more time to get the boat at the proper speed and going straight.

As for too much weight, yes it can be done. But honestly the more the better, some hulls have their limit where it begins to adversly affect the wake but boats like a SAN just keep getting bigger and burlier. You must weight the bow as wake shape/feel/height is achieved by sinking the entire hull. Blaine, I don't doubt your wake got bigger with the weight out of the bow, however, it also got thinner and easier to punch through. I frequently ride behind a Prostar 205 direct drive, for a legit wake it needs a 500 in the back, two 400 on either side of the engine, a 500 in the walkthrough and at least 6 peaople. You start losing people and sacs and the wake just goes downhill.

You say we are forgetting about these new awesome wake building techniques from the builders, why is it then that an X-Star (argueably the most researched hull for riding) stock sucks? Now you add 2 thousand pounds of ballast and it is epic. They are built to be loaded, if you want to go big and can hang, then fill em to the gills.

Hull shape implies a different bottom. You add one spray pocket or a chine and it is different. While both your ski boats have a v-entry and a relatively flat hull they are both Slalom boats designed to ride high out of the water and leave a smooth ride behind.

(Message edited by stephan on May 01, 2006)
Old     (garret_s)      Join Date: Apr 2006       05-01-2006, 12:57 PM Reply   
"Sorry Garrett, it sounds like you need to learn how to drive a wider double up, give yourself more time to get the boat at the proper speed and going straight. "

The driver was at the correct speed. We spent an entire afternoon trying to get one right. Regardless of whether the driving may not have been perfect, the blanket statement that "any boat" can throw a "huge" double up is straight retarded. End of discussion.

As far as the weighting goes, I ride regularly behind the boat in question, the bu sportster lx. Blain is correct in the assumption that removing the nose weight helps the wake...we ride with a single 550lb sac, and usually throw one person in the bow, and the wake looks pretty nice for a ski boat. However, every boat is different, so sinking a malibu ski boat is going to be a lot different than...well...most V drives, and a lot of I drives at that. Some boats just need to be sunk to produce a good wake. Its all about which sections of the hull are sunk, not how much weight is in the boat. If the boat can slam most of the hull with just a bit of weight, the wake will be great.
Old     (lugwrench)      Join Date: Jul 2002       05-01-2006, 12:58 PM Reply   
I'm not saying don't weight them at all. But here you say that 2k added to the x-star and the wake is epic, I've seen some people have in excess of 5000 extra pounds in one. So what I'm asking is that at some point is adding weight being counter productive?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I have all the answers (or any for that matter). Just throwing some ideas around to those more seasoned than I as far as wake building to maybe take a different approach.
Old     (guido)      Join Date: Jul 2002       05-01-2006, 1:22 PM Reply   
Blain, we've run a X1/X2 to the point where the wake is unrideable. We actually had to back about 500lbs out of it to get it back rideable again. For that hull at some point the wake starts actually rolling over off the lip and you cant get enough weight in the nose to get rid of it (the boat sinks instantly when you come off throttle). It takes a lot of weight but it is possible. Most boats will run out of power to get on plane first.

I also agree that moving weight makes a huge difference, but if you have the weight in the right place then more weight will always have a bigger wake. The key is all where you put it. I've gotten it wrong and had 1k lbs less make a bigger wake on my boat, but once you move things around you're money again.

(Message edited by guido on May 01, 2006)
Old     (rmcronin)      Join Date: Aug 2002       05-01-2006, 1:47 PM Reply   
I think it is definitely about the abilities of the rider also. I have seen many riders on my lake as well as well as in videos posted here and on wakepics.com of riders who are riding behind huge wakes and they totally suck. They suck their knees up every time they hit the wake barely getting any air because they never got their fundamentals down on a wake they can handle and had to push it on. Bigger wakes all the way, as long the rider can handle being 100% agressive on it, otherwise it is a waste of gas. Blain's point didn't seem to necessarily be against big wakes, but that people are sacrificing shape just in the name of bragging rights. Once again, each of us has to let our riding do the talking, as all of our b.s. here really means nothing.
Old     (big_ed_x2)      Join Date: Jul 2004       05-01-2006, 1:59 PM Reply   

quote:

I also agree that moving weight makes a huge difference, but if you have the weight in the right place then more weight will always have a bigger wake. The key is all where you put it.


I couldn't agree more!!
Old     (jcv)      Join Date: Oct 2005       05-01-2006, 2:03 PM Reply   
Good points schoolerider. I've even seen a few pretty good riders that don't ride big wakes to their potential. They're used to being really aggressive on smaller wakes and have the pop dialed; but when they step up to a bigger wake, then don't get the pop they could be getting because they're not pushing off like they should, and they're a little intimidated, even if it's only subconsciously. That's why I never ride more than stock ballast and usually less--gotta learn those fundamentals to fully utilize a tidal wave of a wake.
Old     (jcv)      Join Date: Oct 2005       05-01-2006, 4:51 PM Reply   
I've got a question: I know the rule of thumb is that smaller/narrower boats require less weight to get a legit wake, but do bigger boats start out with the bigger wakes when both are unweighted? I know this may be a tough question to answer since so few of us know what our unweighted wakeboarding wake looks like
Old     (eubanks01)      Join Date: Jun 2001       05-01-2006, 4:58 PM Reply   
I think it depends on the boat. Sometimes a bigger boat might have a bigger "unweighted" wake because it's heavier, but then it's extra weight (compared to a smaller boat) might not make up for the extra bouyancy of the larger surface area.

I would think a 30' cabin cruiser would have a bigger wake than a 21' VLX but a 23' LSV might not necessarily have a bigger wake than the 21' VLX..."unweighted" of course.
Old     (jcv)      Join Date: Oct 2005       05-01-2006, 5:33 PM Reply   
but, given that the drafts are the same (i assume they're fairly close), wouldn't the lsv have the larger unweighted wake due to having more surface area at a similiar depth?
Old     (attila916)      Join Date: Oct 2005       05-01-2006, 6:31 PM Reply   
Looks like Big Ed finally got his PC fixed. We missed you dude!
Old    alanp            05-01-2006, 7:35 PM Reply   
i personally think to many people get caught up in riding at 80 feet and at 22-24 mph with an overweighted boat. i feel the majority of wakeboarders could take out a little of the weight, shorten the rope and slow the boat speed and have a perfectly fine wake, and more enjoyable riding experience. less line tension and more forgiving crashes are immediate benefits. i dont guess this will sway most people from trying to emulate the pros though.
Old     (jason_ssr)      Join Date: Apr 2001       05-02-2006, 5:31 AM Reply   
Actually, riding faster makes for better landings, IMO. The rate at which the water is moving under the board affects how "sticky" it is when coming down hot. So, going faster creates a more forgiving landing for a given board size. But the extra speed makes the wake more narrow and smaller, so you have to weight it more, and ride a longer rope.

The downside is the added tension. ya gotta be stronger to ride like that.
Old     (big_ed_x2)      Join Date: Jul 2004       05-02-2006, 7:44 PM Reply   
hahahaha that's funny bro,never was broken!!

Just a little extra time this weekend and couldn't make it to Disco bay.
Old     (westsidarider)      Join Date: Feb 2003       05-02-2006, 8:21 PM Reply   
if your out in my boat we run the most weight possible. typically 5000 pounds including people. we load it down so that it jus barely gets on plane. i ride at 85-90 feet at 27 miles an hour and will have my best sets like that. i love it. to be honest with i almost wont ride if the wake is small. i dont have very much fun if im struggling tryin to go big off a little bump. i feel like im trick skiing or somethin at that slow speed and small wake and short line. but that is all my personal prefference.
Old     (guido)      Join Date: Jul 2002       05-03-2006, 10:27 AM Reply   
I agree with Callen, but I'm not quite as extreme. Ha, ha..... I don't like riding shorter ropes because I feel like I don't get enough time going into the wake. I like the long cut with a longer rope and I love the feel of holding grabs for a long time. Staight up pop is where its at.

I'm never one to bag someones boat when they take me out. I won't ever tell them I don't like their wake, but if your riding behind my boat it'll be dumped to the max all the time.
Old     (smokedawg311)      Join Date: Feb 2005       05-03-2006, 12:07 PM Reply   
In that mobe vid above, did he handle pass or not??? that looked awesome!!!
Old    alanp            05-03-2006, 1:27 PM Reply   
jason and evan i understand what you are saying. i think for pulling bigger tricks like 7's wake to wake you need a larger table to pull such tricks. i just see alot of people that ride at such extremes and struggle to go wake to wake b/c they havent gotten their progressive edge down. im the opposite of you even. i dont like take large cuts into the wake unless the trick calls for it. i rarely take tricks out into the flats and prefer a wake to wake style of riding. i may have adopted my style to my boat though a ps 190. i have about 2k ballast in the boat. if i speed up to about 22.5 the wake just disappears. so perhaps ive just learned to slow the boat and shorten the rope to maximize my boats wake. whenever i get a new boat i guess i'll find out. late
Old     (guido)      Join Date: Jul 2002       05-03-2006, 1:50 PM Reply   
Alan, I agree with you. I've ridden with people that had no business being in a heavily weighted boat, but due to forums like this and the urge to want to ride like the pros people do it anyway. If you feel like you need a big wake to go wake to wake you are definitely wrong. If you can't go wake to wake toe side you don't need a bigger wake. If you aren't landing your 3's it's not because of the wake, etc, etc....

I know what your saying about your boat. On occasion we'll go out on a boat demo or help someone get their wake dialed and I'll be riding a boat with very light or factory only ballast. You can adapt to it, but I don't like it as much. I rode a couple times on boats that would only make wakes at 20mph. I ended up shortening my rope to 70'. Now that felt really weird. Taking 10-15' off a rope makes it feel like a different sport. I was soo rushed when I was coming into the wake. You just have to adapt to what your working with. If your boat makes a great wake at 22, then thats where you ride. Once you find the sweet speed spot then you just adapt your rope accordingly.

I bet if you rode for a while behind a bigger boat that was "dumped" you'd end up liking riding faster and further out pretty quickly.
Old     (liquidmx)      Join Date: Jun 2005       05-03-2006, 2:27 PM Reply   
I used to think that 65 to 70ft was good and couldnt understand the whole 85ft+ deal, then I tried it a few times (dont draw a conclusion on the first time out,it takes some getting used to). Now that I have ridden out farther I really enjoy being out that far. Granted not everyone will understand the reasons since people are at all different levels and experiences. It is hard to explain/justify why someone would like this setup if they have never tried it (or only tried it a handfull of times). It is also a bit arrogant to tell someone to "add more weight, speed up, and add some links" since the typical rider is probably 65 to 70ft back around 21ish mph.

For you guys riding farther back, can you remember why you tried it, and how long it took you to take a liking to it? Am I the only person who grew into liking that distance? Did you just one day say, screw it, lets ride Harris style?


On a similar subject:
To the people who have been riding this way for a while, how has your boat held up to the abuse of dubs, pulling out of the hole (running gear and motor), and if/or if not you trailer with any significant amount of lead/weight in the boat.
Old     (jason_ssr)      Join Date: Apr 2001       05-04-2006, 6:09 AM Reply   
Ryan, yes, its a handlepass. Dre is freakin' smooth!

Matt, this may sound wierd, but when I would see pro's ride, it would seem like they were cutting in a straight line, and I was cutting in an arch. I never knew why, until I was riding with a pro (Shannon Best, around 1997) and I rode his setup. When you get out on a longer rope the cut feels like it looks in the vids. Longer rope means you are travelling on a longer arch, which feels flatter and slower. But, you are generating more load, getting more pop and clearing more distance wake to wake, so you gotta be stronger and more fundamental to ride like that.

Plus Im 6'6" 210lbs and need the speed to keep a 140cm on top of the water!

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