Ridin' the Wake on the Lake

 

 

 

From the New York Times  August 17, 2007

Wakesurfing: Following the Boat Without a Rope
By STEPHEN REGENOLD
THE surf was up on Lake Charlotte, a 255-acre blue gem among the farm fields west of Minneapolis, and Todd Zaugg was yelling at his son to get into the water: “All right, señor, you’re on!”
A little green wave curled from the lake’s chop. The sun was a yellow flare burning overhead.
“Hit it, giddyup!” yelled Taylor, Mr. Zaugg’s 15-year-old, who floated half-submerged, gripping a towrope. His surfboard bobbed crooked to shore.
A boat motor rumbled. A wake rose steep, four feet off the water, curling back at its break. Taylor popped up, the rope whipping tight. He pulled into the wake, one arm stiff and reaching for balance. Then he threw the rope toward a passenger in the back of the boat.
This is wakesurfing, a behind-the-boat sport that employs five-foot (or shorter) surfboards and specially weighted boats that create wakes that mimic an ocean wave. But unlike its cousin sport of wakeboarding — which is an amalgam of surfing and snowboarding that uses short, binding-equipped boards — wakesurfing avoids towropes once a rider is standing, relying instead on the hydrodynamics of an artificially created wave.
Wakeboarding has about three million participants in the United States, said Matt Hickman, the editor of WakeBoarding magazine in Winter Park, Fla. But wakesurfing is the newest trend among the wake-riding disciplines.
“People see wakesurfing and say: ‘Wow! I didn’t know you could do that,’ ” Mr. Hickman, 29, said. He said that wakesurfing, which lets riders coast rope-free behind a moving motorboat for five minutes or more, has gained enough momentum to warrant regular coverage in his magazine, which distributes 75,000 copies.
“There are several board companies now catering to wakesurfers,” Mr. Hickman added. “There’s a wakesurfing world championship every year now as well.” (For information, see www.worldwakesurfingchampionships.com.)
Like an ocean wave, the wake generated by a boat configured for wakesurfing creates a steep face between its peak and the flat water below. It curls over as it breaks farther away from the stern. Surfers ride in a window where the wake breaks behind the boat, cutting, slicing, smacking the lip, dipping back toward a small curling barrel, performing tricks like spins — all rope free.
Mr. Zaugg, a 1998 national kneeboarding champion from Independence, Minn., said the wake generated by his boat — a $50,000 Correct Craft Super Air Nautique — is like a perpetual wave. “You can ride for as long as your legs can take it,” he said. The average wake-wave is three to four feet tall; it trails from the transom on the back of the boat for 25 feet or so, jumping high off the stern, a glassy face propped up, then curling onto itself as it fades to a tail of unsurfable foam.
Lead weights and ballast bags filled with water are used in boats like Mr. Zaugg’s to tilt the hull enough to the right or left, creating an abrupt wake that makes the sport possible.
Because wakesurfing is practiced so close to the stern of a moving boat, outboard and inboard/outboard motors with exposed propellers are verboten. Wakesurfers instead employ inboard-motor boats, which have the propeller positioned beneath the stern and out of the way. “People could be seriously injured using the wrong type of boat,” Mr. Hickman said.
On Lake Charlotte, where Mr. Zaugg captained his boat on a recent Saturday, six surfers traded turns on the wake. It was hot and blurry-humid, the sun pinned dead above like a lamp on the lake.
Taylor surfed off and on for 20 minutes, alternatively nudging up near the stern of the boat, then drifting back 15 feet or more away, slicing into the wave’s ever-exploding curl. He flew off the surfboard a half-dozen times trying tricks, the board’s tip sinking, catching an edge, and sending Taylor flying. Once, Taylor cut too wide off the wake, causing the board to lose speed and sink.
Mr. Zaugg drove, peeking often at a big dashboard-mounted mirror to see his son surfing behind. All four passengers sat on the boat’s left bench, their collective body weight further leaning the craft to bolster the wake.
“You’ve got this wake thing down,” said Bob Englund, a 45-year-old carwash-equipment salesman who lives on the lake. He was admiring the glassy pyramid spiked up under Taylor’s board. “A perfect wave,” he said.
Mr. Englund’s daughter, Allysa, an 8-year-old, was up next. She gritted her teeth, fingers curled on the towrope handle, as Mr. Zaugg idled in the middle of the lake.
“Ready, sweetie pie?” the captain yelled back.
Allysa nodded, and the motor rumbled up its gears. She popped unto the surfboard, feet splayed wide, a lock of blond hair pressed over an eye.
“You’re good now,” Mr. Englund said, standing backward in the moving craft, an arm outstretched. “Throw the rope.”
She dropped the line, and her dad reeled it in.
Then Allysa was free, standing frozen on her board adjacent to the big wall of water, arms out and stiff for balance like limbs on a little oak.
Allysa trailed the moving craft for 30 seconds. She stared straight down at the circulating wake by her toes, the forces of physics, gravity and motion, buoyancy and speed, keeping her afloat and tethered mysteriously to a boat tootling on.
Mr. Englund, who once stacked small boulders in his boat to weight it slightly off-kilter for a wake, cheered for his daughter. “Ride it!” he yelled out.
Speakers mounted on Mr. Zaugg’s boat pumped bass from the main riff of a pseudo-rap by the band Cake. “He’s going the distance; he’s going for speeeeed. ...”
The sun stuck, pegged high in the air. A tube of SPF 30 sunscreen was passed around the boat. Four more surfers were in line to ride, watching Allysa on her third session with the surfboard.
She took a final tumble, leaping from her stance as the board sank. Mr. Zaugg made a wide U-turn. Allysa crawled back into the boat, now idling, a huge grin and wide eyes. “That feels like you’re flying,” she said.

 

 

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Hang 10, Lake Travis
The surf's always up when you ride the wake behind a boat

Who needs an ocean to surf when you've got a lake full of water and a boat that makes a big wake?
Wake surfing is turning Austin-area lakes into a sort of Hill Country Honolulu, without the sharks, skin-shredding coral reefs or sticky saltwater. Surfers use a tow rope to pull themselves up on boards, then drop the rope when they catch the continuous wave created as the boat plows through the water.

On Lake Travis, David Mann surfs behind a boat that is specifically weighted for him to catch a wave. His father has made his passion of wake surfing into a board-making business. Wake surfers can use a regular surfboard or a board designed for lake surfing.

 

Larry Mann is now a part-time chiropractor, but a full-time wake surfboard maker. He's holding one of the boards his company, Trick Boardz, makes.


After a few tries, I was on the board and riding the wake.


What's this?
Riding a frothy, thigh-high freshwater wave looks like fun, and there's no frantic paddling involved. But just how hard is it? We headed to Spicewood, where part-time chiropractor and full-time entrepreneur Larry Mann manufactures twin-nosed, specially shaped wake surfboards, for a lesson in how to hang 10 on Lake Travis.
Mann, 51, caught the wake-surfing bug about five years ago when a friend took him out on Lake Austin, tossed a cheap skimboard behind the boat and showed him how to surf on it. That board ultimately inspired Mann to give up his full-time chiropractic practice and start designing surfboards to use behind boats.
"The first time I let go of the handle I let out a big whoop," Mann says. "I was absolutely blown away." Even though he'd lived in Hawaii six years, he never caught on to surfing. It was too difficult.
Wake surfing, he says, is easier to pick up than traditional surfing. You don't have to work to catch a wave, for one thing. You grab a tow rope and let it pull you into the wake. "In ocean surfing, you spend 30 minutes waiting to catch a 10- or 15-second ride," Mann says. "With this, you spend 30 minutes and you're surfing for 30 minutes."
Mann shuttered his Austin chiropractic business (he still maintains a small practice in Spicewood) to launch Trick Boardz in 2003. He molds fiberglass surfboards in the same cavernous warehouse where he makes a device called Fresh Air Exhaust, which attaches to a boat's tailpipe to muffle noise and divert exhaust.
Today, he's arranged for his son David Mann to pick us up at Briarcliff Marina on Lake Travis, not far from Pace Bend Park. David motors up in a 20-foot Tigé wake board boat. As we putter out, I learn a few basics:
Only surf behind a boat with an inboard motor. Never use a boat with a rear-mounted motor, or any motor you can see, because your arms, legs or body could get caught in the prop. Yuck.
Second lesson? The boat has to be weighted just right. Mann switches on a small electric pump that sucks water from the lake into two 5-foot Fat Sacs, which look like miniature waterbeds, in the rear corner of the boat. They serve as ballast, sinking the back half of the boat deeper into the water, which will make a beefier wake.
Boat drivers should be aware of the wake their boat is making, Mann says, and act responsibly. It's best to surf in areas with less traffic.
As we wait for the bags to fill, I get some history. Wake surfing isn't entirely new. "People were riding surfboards behind boats in the 1950s and '60s, but they didn't let go of the rope," Larry Mann says.
Water skiing came first. Riders strapped long, thin boards to their feet and caught a tow behind a motorboat. In the 1990s, the shorter, fatter wake boards took over, and a whole new world of airborne antics evolved. Wake surfers still get to do tricks, but they don't hang onto a tow rope. Just about anything that can be done on land on a skateboard can be done on a wake surfboard. It's done at slower speeds than waterskiing or wake boarding, which makes wipeouts less painful. And the surfer is so close to the boat, passengers can carry on a conversation with the board rider.
About a dozen companies, half of them tiny startups such as Mann's, are now manufacturing wake surfboards. Some are shaped like traditional ocean surfboards, and stand 7 or 8 feet tall. Mann's boards, which sell for between $220 and $260, are shorter, about waist or chest high. "The big boards are easy to get up on and go straight and keep going straight," Larry Mann says. Bo-ring. Shorter boards are better for doing tricks such as spins, rail grabs and something called a "shuv-it," where the board rolls beneath your feet.
With that, David Mann leaps into the cool waters of Lake Travis. He grabs the tow rope, just 16 feet long, and places his feet on the wake surfboard, toes close to one edge, knees bent. As the boat surges forward, David eases onto his feet. A 3-foot, V-shaped wake forms, and David glides to the steepest part of it and drops the tow rope.
It looks like magic, but David surfs along just a few feet from the teak swim platform attached to the boat, cantilevered onto what looks like a green tongue of water. He skims along at about 11 mph, gathers himself, then rotates the board beneath his feet like a record spinning on a turntable. After a few minutes and a couple of 360s, David falls off the back of the wake and we cruise around to pick him up.
Now it's my turn. I plop in the water, position the board under my feet and give the go-ahead. And just like that, I'm down. The boat never even pulled me to my feet. It takes a few tries, but eventually I get up. It's tricky, though, because I'm used to slalom water skiing with my left foot forward. Because of the way the Fat Sacs are arranged on the boat, I have to ski opposite of what's natural for me. It's awkward. And though I finally get comfortable getting towed, as soon as I drop the rope I splash into the water.
After a while, Larry Mann suggests reconfiguring the Fat Sacs to put the largest wake on the opposite side of the boat. We switch sides, and now I can ride with my left foot forward. And just like that, I get it. I can feel the board surfing along, and I let the rope go slack, so I'm surfing without the aid of the tow rope. Cowabunga!
Glance around the lake any busy weekend and you'll see that wake boarding still rules. But more and more, wake boarders are pulling out the surfboards at the end of a long day on the lake because it's less physically taxing. As the summer goes on and pulled muscles and other injuries add up, wake boarders tend to shift to the easier-on-your-body wake surfboards.
That's why the Manns expect the popularity of wake surfing to swell like a tsunami. "We're still in the pre-explosion stage," Larry Mann says.
The sport is even developing its own lingo, a combination of surfing, skateboarding and wakeboarding terms. The Manns have added a few terms of their own, like "hangover," when you push the tip of the surfboard over the swim platform at the back of the boat.
After a day on the lake, I'm practically craving Hawaiian staples such as pineapple and coconut. And I think I'm deserving of one term usually reserved for a surf girl in the islands — wahine.
Learn, view wake surfing
For more information and demonstration videos of how to surf behind a boat, go to www.HowToWakeSurf.com. For more information on the surfboards made in Spicewood, go to www.TrickBoardz.com.