OT: Need wakeboard advice

[skategoat]

I know some of you guys wakeboard. I need some advice now that my kids are bugging me about wakeboarding.

Can I pull my kids (70 and 100 lbs.) on a 16 foot fibreglass boat (light one) with 50hp motor?

If so, what kind of board should I be buying? How big?

Muchos gracias.

[Guest Ghostrider]

You should be able to get them up with a 50hp. But probably with only a driver and a spotter in the boat. The good thing about wakeboarding is that you dont have to go very fast to stay up and do some tricks. Probably under 20mph for those little tykes to start playing on the wake and wth surface tricks as long as the boat will stay on plane.

As for size, something in the low 120's like a 121 should do the trick. The 70 pounder could probably go smaller, but that should be alright for the 100 pounder until he hits the 125lbs mark.

A good board might be the Hyperlite Voyager 121. As for bindings...err..boots...I had to go try them all on to decide. They have so many features and ways of getting in that its mind boggling. But most any boot you can get in XS or XXS, so kids specific might not be an issue there.

Hope that helps a little

[knoch]

Ghostrider's right on the boat and the board size, but as for bindings, since more than one person will regularly be using them, you should probably find something with quite a bit of adjustment capability. Also what is important with bindings is ankle support, you don't want something thats like a toe piece with a strap that goes around the heel, i would suggest a boot that heightwise would reach at least a third of the way up to the knee, that has some sort of sinch or rubber strap to hold it snug high on the leg. I know i just suggested a whole lot all together but there are tons of wakeboard bindings out there that include all of that.

And hey if you can't get the boat to pull hard enough to get em out of the water, get a really long rope, like maybe at least 2 ski ropes combined for about 150 feet, have someone swim the kid out off shore so that the rope is all the way out,and then get 4 or 5 big dudes to grab onto the rope and start running. Thats how i learned to waterski when i was little and i'm sure it'd work to teach em to get up on a wakeboard until you get some boat with a huge engine in it, but a 50 hp should work alright.