JL is right. Jerry Price had a great ad for a while something like Fins = speed. Speed = air. Very true for bigger surf style boards. If you look at that one board Johnny Stieg is on (he is in the blue wet suit). He can gain speed on the boat probably up to 16 mph. The longer the pocket he has to work with, the more speed he can generate and the more hang time he'll get. There is also a TON of projection forward that is hard to see from the boat.
If you've seen some of the video's of Drew Danielo and the Vic skim team those guys can ollie 2 feet in the air basically in place using skim style boards. Huge air, but it's different.
There is a problem though in practice. Typically with a boat, the taller the wake, the shorter the pocket. Getting a longer pocket on many boats with more speed decreases the wake size. We've run our Tige at close to 18 mph and it's planing so the wake is maybe 10 inches tall, even though the pocket length is 40 feet
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Ignoring any weight limitaions and potential property damage issues, I have a theory on optimal size and pocket length for aerials on surf style boards. Make the wake as tall as you can such that it doesn't curl too close to the boat and then run the speed so that a rider can get three to four "full" pumps from the back of the pocket up to the highest part of the lip, but not below 2 feet. That would be the optimal wake for a boat - or strive for as close as possible. I think it would be hard to get more length and still keep a decent height on the wake.
Also like JL points out, you have to land in the tranny - if you hit the flats from that height it is hard on the knees and tends to cause the board to stop dead.
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