D-Drive Surfing?

I have a 1990 MC Maristar 210. I was wondering if it would be possible to load up a corner with some Fat Sacs and surf behind it. Would it throw a good enough wake for it to be worth my while to even mess with it?

I've seen a lot of guys surfing with d-drives.

Get the boat the bank on one side, and put some weight in the front, and it should be okay.

will you be able to surf? Yes. Will your transmission be more likely to go because of surfing? Yes. You should be able to surf with a decent sized board without much, the more you load it down, the more it's likely to wear away at the gearing. Older boats especially, I wouldn't tube or surf behind them

You need a bigger board because it's tough to get enough weight in a light low hull. I do it all the time behind my D-drive but it's newer, bigger and higher.
It's important to get a lot of list, then balance front to back. for your wave shape. I have found that the 150# Fat Bricks are useful to make adjustments easily. A friend has a 205 that he uses but he does not get as much push as he'd like.
Good Luck.

Originally Posted by behindtheboat

will you be able to surf? Yes. Will your transmission be more likely to go because of surfing? Yes. You should be able to surf with a decent sized board without much, the more you load it down, the more it's likely to wear away at the gearing. Older boats especially, I wouldn't tube or surf behind them

I wouldn't go that far. RPMs for surfing are about the same as for wakeboarding, and you don't have to take off as quick. I don't see a huge addition of stress on the engine or transmission. The hull of the boat deffinately will have more stress placed on it with the extra weight though.

I have owned 2 direct drives and they can produce great wakesurfing wakes. I had a centurion tru trac and now I have a sport nautique. I like to load the entire back down like if the engine was located there and then load the sides down and center compartment. The scary part about d-drives is the low height of the gunwale. It takes a skilled driver and fairly controlled conditions to not have water come over the back and sink your boat. If it does scare you too much, just take out some of the weight all around until you're comfortable.

I mean load the one side down that you want to surf

Originally Posted by behindtheboat

will you be able to surf? Yes. Will your transmission be more likely to go because of surfing? Yes. You should be able to surf with a decent sized board without much, the more you load it down, the more it's likely to wear away at the gearing. Older boats especially, I wouldn't tube or surf behind them

This got me wondering about torque ratings on the trans in my older direct drive. It's a Velvet Drive 72C and is rated at 595 ft/lbs (as per http://www.velvetdrive.com/techinfo/V7172/V7172pg3.pdf). Seems like way more than my little 454 can make as it's hardly more than stock. Heck, the big block in my truck, which I built to have ridiculous amounts of torque, only makes 570 ft/lbs. I can't imagine a detuned marine engine making more than that. Mine was only rated at 330 HP and I can't imagine it's making more than 350 HP now. I would think there's a lot of buffer room in that setup.

We just sold our D-Drive Tige 21i and surfed on it quite a bit. I found it more difficult to set up a consistent wakeboard wake on it than to surf. Like Eric said though....you will need to get the rub rail at least to the water line to get a good wave going. We ran an 1100lb u shaped fat sack around and behind the engine, a 350# tube sack on the surf side rear plus about 150# up front in the walkway.

We did this for a couple of years and decided it is time to go v-drive and hopefully have all of our ballast hidden. Kind of a pain always tripping over the bags.