wakesurfing at Lake Powell illegal?

Ok so I'm at Powell right now on my blackberry so help if you can. We were surfing today and a ranger in a coast guard boat came and told us that wakesurfing is illegal at powell and you have to be 20' back. She said it was federal law. Is she full of it? Can you help me out cause I'd really like to get in some surfing.

Probably mistaken in Utah waters you must be in a standing position when less than 20' from boat. From USCG website
http://www.uscgboating.org/regulations/boating_laws.htm

Here's an old discussion on the subject; http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/messages/559019/583811.html

Copied from that discussion,

"Jeff The rumor you have heard is true to some degree. At all federal waters you are not allowed to do anything within 20 ft of the back of the boat. I have been stopped multiple times at Powell. I have talked at length with the rangers. The good news is that if you are using a 20 ft rope they are ok with that. Most of the time when they have stopped us we are not using a rope, go figure. But when they ask, we show them the 20ft rope and they send us on our way. I have heard that is wsia is working with the feds to change the rule so you can be standing with in 20 ft. Bottom line get a 20 ft rope and you should have no problem."

"I just got off of the phone with two people at Lake Powell the first was a Brent McGinn, Chief Ranger and the second was his boss, Eric Scott, Downlake District Ranger. I was speaking to Brent first and after a while Eric came in the room so he put him on speakerphone and I spoke to both together. Initially Brent didn't seem to understand what wakesurfing was. He cited the 20' foot rope rule and when I asked him "what happens when they drop the rope?" he didn't think that it was possible. "How do you stay behind the boat? Is the rope attached to the board?" he asked. After thoroughly explaining it to both of them, they both agreed that they wouldn't have any problem with this activity. They both said that they are concerned about the safe activities of the boaters and if they came up and saw this activity, they would deem it safe and move on to the next boat. Carbon Monoxide poisoning is their main issue, I cited the Utah law and they reccommended that I speak with the head guy in Salt Lake. I think it helped out alot when I told them that I have already had correspondence with him. I am going to be sending them a couple of pictures of wakesurfing, they said that they would like to inform their rangers that it is safe, and I invited him (Brent) out on my boat so that he could see how safe it really is. Don't know if he'll take me up on it, but I want to make sure that these guys in charge are not misinformed and apply other appropriate laws (teak and body surfing) to this activity. If I get pulled over and ticketed while I am at Lake Powell, I will be going directly to this guy's office to fight it."

I would like to build a section on wake9.com specifically for this purpose, so people can go, and find out the laws and stuff, and have some videos giving education on how to perform the sport safely. Any recommendations/ideas would be great, I want to do whatever I can to keep the sport legal, and maybe help turn the tide.

Robert, I am doing somewhat of the same thing and contributing to another website being built specifically for wakesurfing. I am gathering info for each state regarding wakesurfing as well the CG regs and other info I have found etc. I definitely think some education vid's would be great for the beginners. I still see alot of people that could be surfing safer. Good luck on your section, we need all the help we can get!

I see alot of people on here with I/Os saying that they have a big swim platform so they can safely surf behind them.Every wakesurfboard builder has a warning about never using behind an outboard or inboard/outboard,do you think these companies would be discouraging with outboards & i/os from buying their product if there wasn't a real safety issue with using them behind those types of boats?It's just another reason they will use to ban wakesurfing.

I am here at Powell this weekend to surf & watch some brostock. We have already been stopped two times by different rangers and told two different things.

Ranger 1 informed us we need a 100ft rope but it is ok to surf as long as our rope totals 100ft.

Ranger 2 told us we need to be more than 20ft behind the back of the boat and that this is a "special for lake Powell only" rule. She said in other words no Wakesurfing.

The rangers were highly concentrated in the area near brostock. We moved away & had no additional issues so far.

I was in Bullfrog bay last week and surfed all week without a problem

Wouldn't a rule/law specific to Lake Powell have to be in writing somewhere and accessible to the public to be enforceable?

I was at lake powell (Bullfrog end) all week and didn't have any problems with rangers. In fact, a ranger came over and asked us what was wrong with our boat because it was leaning so much. We told him we were surfing and we do that on purpose. He thought we were stuck on a rock or something. We had a whole conversation and he was joking about how much beer we must have in the corner of our boat.

Long story short, he didn't give us any problems and we kept surfing. Maybe the rangers at the wahweep end are confused. I've had no problem at the Bullfrog end.

I think specifically for this past weekend, the rangers were coming down hard on anything and everything in the close vicinity to Brostock. Regardless, however, I feel they should at least be on the same page and people should get consistent information from all of them.

Like I said, as soon as we moved back towards our campsite which was about 30 minutes from the Brostock area, we had no problems.

Brostock was a GIANT frat party and the rangers were looking for trouble.