wtstapel

That's awesome. Really wish the Malibu open was still 30 minutes from my door.

Can I just say that I hate the fact that I don't ever see the skier cross "the worlds flattest wake"? I want to see how much it pushes the skier off course. Lots of walls of water, beautiful stuff, but I'd love to see some uninterrupted buoys.

@ScarletArrow "Is there a difference between surf and wakeboard boats?" Short answer - no. The big difference is in the use. How many wakeboarders do you know who are capable of utilizing the full ballast a boat is equipped with? Honest answer is few to none for most boaters. I wakeboard 75% and ski 25%. Our surf board is used to foot from.

But, anybody can go out on the biggest boat made by the inboard manufactures and fill the ballast to the gills. There is no need to put in time, crashes, effort into working you way into using the big wave. On day 1 of ownership they are out there throwing everything the boat is capable of making, and learning on the fly.

I'm onboard with addressing the potential impact from surf boats. Just wish wakeboarding wasn't being dragged along with it. Bow high plowing with full ballast makes a bigger wave than planed-out ballasted wakeboarding.

 

@tjs1295 I appreciate the offer. I'll be doing another break in Minocqua next week. But, still in research and "convince the wives we need 3 boats" mode.

Wow thank you all for the great suggestions. I'll review and see how the process goes. Not in any hurry, just want to start the search. For reference, everything we do is casual here. Not running a course. We ski 22 off because that's where the wake is best on my smaller wakeboard boat. We ski anywhere from 28 to 32 mph. Just out to enjoy the turns and use different muscles than wakeboarding. We're in SE Wisconsin.

 

Again, I appreciate all this insight!

Oh and for speed, we both fluctuate between 190 and 220 lbs. We've used my wakeboard boat and were only hitting 40-42.

Our footing is minimal. Its something I want to learn and something my boat partner wants to get better at. I don't have much access to a boom currently. I'm learning to foot off the boom. My boat partner foots long line.

 

Thanks for the responses thus far.

I am looking for a 2nd boat. I currently own and maintain my v-drive wakeboard boat. I'd like to buy a relatively inexpensive direct drive as we like to ski too. No rush so I'd like to find something sub 15k. Priorities would be for the ski wake and reliability. We'd only use this boat to foot and slalom. Reading other threads it seems I should be looking for a ski nautique or prostar 190, is that correct for the early 90's era boats? TIA.

I cant confirm because I have not checked each, but I would guess that only Lake Geneva down in the SE part of the state has or will immediately implement a spotter requirement. They were the most active group opposing the law in the lead up to passage.

I compiled the data for this law when it was under legislative discussion back in 2016 and 2017. When I compiled the data there were 17 states that allowed mirror usage. Over the 5 year period between 2011 and 2015 there were 3.8 accidents involving a towed water-sports per 100,000 registered boats in the average year in those 17 states (that's a mouthful). In the remaining states there were 6.3.

I'd be willing to share any data should others make any headway on this in other states.

 

@"Keith Menard" In my opinion this was about the law. Its up to the user to decide what level of risk they want to entertain. The previous law did not dictate that my spotter be able to assist in any accident response, just that they be competent to spot. I'd argue if you really want to address safety in Wisconsin, and believe that laws are the only way to improve it, then you'd look at PFDs and the lack of requirements.