Wakeboard more please! Even if you think it's too gnarly...
A lot of people are just surfing now and not wakeboarding at all. Or they started out wakeboarding then switched to surfing and leave the wakeboard on the rack or garage. Obviously, I think you should do whatever you want. You all have a lot of reasons why you surf and don't wakeboard which is totally fine, I'm not going to give someone a hard time or call them a wuss because they want to surf instead of wakeboard. But, one of the reasons I hear though is that wakeboarding is just too scary and your aging body can't take the slams (I'm paraphrasing).
I want to encourage you to still get on on the board though but just change the way you ride.
I wrote this on the Moomba/Supra Facebook group, but I thought I'd post it here too.
I know when you're starting out, people don't want to ride the biggest wake because it's scary but I think speed and rope length make a bigger difference in how gnarly it is. If you have a longer distance to gap (wake to wake) plus higher boat speeds, you can get really peeling across the water. I think you should ride with full ballast or at least most of it and just slow down to like 18/19 or even slower as long as the wake is clean and you're not dragging too slow in the water. Too slow and you're going to get a really sloppy release off the wake which makes things more difficult. Then ride at the shortest rope length you have. Speed is what really hurts, but if you're concentrating on straight up and down pop those falls typically aren't too bad. It's way easier to ride a big wake as far as trying to get pop because you work way less to get it. It's more like riding up a ramp as opposed to loading your board and dealing with more line tension.
Having said that, you need to learn how to handle more line tension and loading your board to progress but starting by cruising off a big wake is fun and easier than trying to clear wake to wake on a wide small wake.
If you're still really scared you can also lengthen the rope to full length so there's no way you'll be going wake to wake. That way you're just jumping a single wake without having to worry about coming up short and casing into the other wake. You don't want to stay at this stage forever though, because that wake to wake landing is the good smooth feeling you're after.
As for weight placement, if you're not going full 100% then I'd definitely side on a heavier bow. Heavier rear weight make the wake a lot steeper. A longer mellow wake (even bigger) is a lot more predictable and comfortable than slamming into a vert wall. It's less abrupt and you can focus more popping at the top of the wake and keeping your board in control. You can always steepen the wake as you progress to your preference.
I know many of you know all this, but I see so many awesome boats on this forum with so much wakeboard potential and I think many of you are missing out on what wakeboarding can give you. Ya, surfing is fun but it's just not going to give you the feeling that wakeboarding potentially can. Once you string together a line of tricks back to back on a wakeboard pass... I'm sorry but no amount of surface 360s are going to feel like that.
I'm not hating just trying to encourage you all to not give up on wakeboarding (no matter how old you are)
