WAKEBOARDING IS DEAD
By Perry Mack Trends in Water Toys
Miranda Urbina Photo
WAKEBOARDING IS DEAD. IT MAY BE A LITTLE EARLY TO WRITE ITS OBITUARY, but it’s not far off. I owned the Mountain Surf Shop for roughly thirteen years in Kelowna, BC. In winter, we were Kelowna’s premier ski and board shop and summer we supplied boaters with the Okanagan’s largest selection of watersports gear. On the bleeding edge of new sports, we were the first to learn, promote, sell, rent and teach new sports. To put the timeline in perspective, I remember days when people were looking at our display wall saying ‘That’s a weird looking snowboard”. “No”, I explained, “That’s a wakeboard”. New sports continue to emerge, as does the gear that makes the sport. In the past, we’ve seen wakeboarding obliterate kneeboarding; carbon-graphite construction rise to royalty leaving compression- molded construction for the masses; kite-boarding laid waste to windsurfing;
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and today stand up paddleboards (SUP) and wakesurfers are the rage (with a surprising resurgence in kneeboarding). I chatted with the experts at Custom Ski & Board in Kelowna (
www.customskiandboard.com) about the newest trends for 2014. Although the kneeboarding resurgence
is new, there’s nothing new in kneeboards. The resurgence has to do with the simplicity of the sport. In the same way that tubing has never lost it’s shine, (anyone, at almost any age, in any mental state can do it), the kneeboard requires virtually no skill and is a natural progression from tubing, offering more control and the illusion that your destiny is in your own hands as opposed to the boat’s pilot. Stand up paddleboards (SUP) and wakesurfers are the new Poseidon’s of watersports, with new boards, events, teaching methods, and styles emerging
each year. It’s true of every sport in it’s early stages – the design, construction and teaching techniques evolve at a blistering pace - and you don’t want to get caught buying behind the trend, or else you’ll be wanting to upgrade the day after you hit the water. Size matters – in wakesurfing. Bigger boards are for bigger riders as the boards have more surface area, which generates more flotation. The same property also makes a bigger board better if your boat has a smaller wake. The larger boards also generate more drag, moving more slowly, making them easier for beginners. Boards are measured in feet and inches and anything over 5’6” is a bigger board with boards like ‘The Duke’ from Ronix available in a 6’1” length. Naturally the opposite is true for smaller boards – faster, more maneuverable, better on larger wakes for lighter riders.
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