New Aluminum Wake Boat

[sandm]

I have seen the pics and toured boats at the boat show that make the sticker prices on our wakeboats look like a kia. $149k for a twin blown engine 28ft river boat with all the trimmings. you are a minimum of 45-50k to walk in the door of a customweld/northwest jet boat designed for big water so to say we care more due to cost is not correct(iirc, about the same as a new lsv?). we care more as a few dimples in a riverboat are no big deal. hit a rock in fiberglas and you open up a potential sinking can of worms or at the least, a stress crack that will get worse with every surf wave it crosses. we buy wakeboats that look good and personalize it for that very reason(stickers/wraps), they buy aluminum to run rivers and know it's going to get beat up. it's designed for it. I would look at the sales numbers from customweld vs moomba and challenge the mass-produced hull shape theory. fiberglas demands a hull for mass production, aluminum just needs welders with precut stringers and hulls. different boats and different production methods.

the pavati was handbuilt, no forms so that will explain some of the lower cost of production and they can customize any part of it to your liking because of that. it's a VERY high freeboard and standing in the storage locker behind the driver seat, the seatbase was at my waist-very deep storage.

I don't work for them/own one or try to plug them, but I can say being on one, it is a unique design that has a place in the market and it seems that some are ready to dismiss it because it's "different"(and have no experience on it). I did hear from some wakeboarders that saw the wake friday night before the surf contest that it was very nice(heard the word mackin used once). the surfwave from our groups opinion had a solid base and had it not been for a few issues(typical with any new production boat) it could have been one of the better in the group. it was absolutely HUGE, just not much length and the transition took a while to figure out.