I have been considering a ballast system since last summer when I started surfing more. I have always felt that my Tige 2005 24V needed very little extra ballast to creat a fantastic wakeboarding wake. Surfing is another matter - I need weight, lots of it. Having a boat full of newbies (seems to be my penchant) and trying to fill sacs and tripping over 12V plugs all got to be tedious.
My dealer, who I think is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world, discouraged a ballast system. He says it was a pain to put in and 2 of the 3 he has done requested it be removed later for various reasons.
I am not a craftsman, really. I am not a mechanic or construction type of guy. I love to work in the boat, have done some stereo work on my own and this seemed like a doable project. I do consider myself reasonably intelligent. This project required far more thinking than I was hoping for, but I'll be getting into that later. I initially talked to Kevin Barrett at Rival and he was very attentive and articulate and available. It seemed that with a little phone support, I was sure that I could do the project. Unfortunately, he is no longer with them, but the other folks I talked to seemed decent, although my impression is that they are not up to par with Kevin's communication skills. The person I found most helpful was another fellow named Kevin who does mechanical work and installations for Rival. He was very useful, but sometimes not available, because he would be in the middle of a job. I felt like they made every effort to answer my questions.
I am not afraid of a little hard work, or of busting my knuckles a little (which happened a few times).
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