I had HOPED to have the board completed by the AZ contest, but...the best laid plans.
Last year we messed around with a wakeboard behind the boat and you can surf it, but it's ugly. So then we took an old surfstyle board and "superglued" some velcro and foot straps onto it - the footstraps that you'd find on a Tow-In board or on the expert level Flow Boards.
It's sick.
It allows much higher airs and control of the board while airborne. So ollie 180's are almost effortless and things like aerial 3's and inverted tricks become possible.
The limitation, of course, is on tricks that require horizontal rotation of the board itself, with a static or reverse orientation of the rider. Which is the forte of skimmers.
The construction of this board will actually have the inset like on a tow-in.
Hypothetical speaking, if someone lands a rodeo (sans rope - like a snowboard), does this level of innovation require a third level or genre of wakesurfing? So there would be surf, skim and strap?
Or do we see the sport as so dynamic at this stage that we just wait and see what else develops, call it all "good" and wakesurfing?
(Message edited by surfdad on April 07, 2006)