FlyBoy Wakesurf Boards – wakesurfing

Well, traveling to the airport at 3AM is one of the BEST times to avoid traffic and sleeping!  One of the issues with wakesurf contests, is that there are so few of them, you’re almost guaranteed a trip of some kind.  It would be nice to see more contests in the years to come, but in this economy it’s understandable that participation by both contestants and sponsors is down.

We have been to all but one of the USA Wakeboard Nationals – Wakesurf over the years.  It’s been some of the best contests in a grassroots sense.  The longboard division was always great fun, Jessica Osborne, the former World Wakesurfing Champion – Womens,  was walking the full length of the board and walking varials.  Team Calibrated, from back in the day, had Mikey and Austin manning the bbq where they promptly BURNED the hot dogs to a crisp and earned the nickname “the carcinogen twins”. The Snyder’s wouldn’t even let their dog’s eat the charcol mess!   In their defense, they had to turn the hot dogs using a philips head screw driver – hmmmm, hmmmm good, nothing like the sanitary taste of a screwdriver in your hot dog!

The current hot spots for wakesurfing seems to be California and Texas.  The midwest had some interest, but never seemed to compare to the growth of the sport in the west and Texas.  The shift of Shred Stixx to Texas and the establishment of Wakeoutlaws.com, now ToWanza.com generated substantial interest in that area. 

Another thing that traveling to contests does is allow us to see, if just from the airport, various parts of the country.  Today we connect in through Denver.  I always love when runway’s of major airports go over freeways and interstates, you can look down and see cars zipping under the plane.  I also love some of the cultural differences in these places.  We come from California, the land of fences and coveted personal property.  Everyone has a fence around their property, but in places like Minnesota a backyard fence was a rarity!  Imagine, you Californian’s, your backyard was also your neighbors backyard! 

Well, it’s just about time to board the plane, so I’ll stop here and continue later in the day. Ok, so I lied, we are now offically in Orlando and today is a practice day. Another thing about travel is JET LAG!  It’s exhausting! We are going to be heading out for the lake soon, and hopefully I’ll have some pictures from the first day of the event.  Just a few pictures from yesterday, the Orlando airport has a super fast shuttle type thing!

Inside the shuttle from the gates to baggage claim, there is a little bit of water in this neck o’ the woods.

There is also a little bit of Disney in this area…we passed a road named “Seven Dwarfs Lane”

…and NASA and the Kennedy Space Center show up now and again.

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The two men most responsible for the addition of wakesurfing to USA Wakeboard Nationals are Ed Sullivan and Chris Walker.  Chris Walker has been President of the Board of Directors of USA Wakeboard and Ed Sullivan has been President of the Midwest Board Sports Club.   Ed Sullivan was a prolific organizer on the midwest through last year, organizing in Indiana and Ohio mostly.

At the end of 2006 Chris Walker, Bryon Greene, and Ed Sullivan were at the restaurant during a break at the Wakeboard Midwest Halloween Washout. Chris was involved with a number of events and so Ed Sullivan asked if he could add wakesurfing to one of those events. Chris said “Now Ed, I want you to sit down before I tell you what I have in mind.” Chris invited Ed Sullivan to add wakesurfing to the 2007 NWL National Championship. That went off so well and Chris has been very supportive of the efforts to grow wakesurfing, that wakesurfing has been a component of Nationals since that time.

Chris lobbied USA Wakeboard to make that addition. Chris was able to add wakesurfing as a direct result of the growth of the sport due to the effort that Jeff Walker (my dad!) and the AWSA have made over the previous three or five years. 

Most of those early contests were held as USA Wakeboard League (NWL) grassroots events. The NWL is the USA Wakeboard grassroots organization. The heyday of USA Wakeboard was in 2008 there were state championships in California (Northern and Southern), Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, and Texas.

In 2009 and 2010, there was a significant change in the fee structure of USA Wakeboard’s grassroots events and most wakesurf organizers migrated to the WWA for insurance and sanctioning, reducing the USA Wakeboard wakesurfing events to just two.  

We will be heading to Florida for this years Wakesurf Nationals on Thursday, be sure to check back to follow along on our travel log!

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Super tired after a full day on the water, so no blog entry today, but a few pictures of wakesurfing from today.

And a quick video!

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Several years ago we built a balsa composite sandwich wakesurf board.  The look is really sweet, although some say it’s got a look like a pergo floor.  This is that board.

A close up of the sheets used.

This is a picture of the bottom of the board, you can see the grain and my mixing and matching the pieces, it’s possible to develop a really nice rich and unique look.

This material isn’t as easy to work with as the high density foam we have used in the past, but it offers a number of performance advantages.  Balsa is amazingly light in density, but is still of higher density than the high density foam we’ve used.  Typically 6 to 7 pounds per cubic foot.  Balsa has amazing rebound properties, far better than Corcell, in fact boards manufactured with Balsa skins tend to be called trampolines, because of the pop they create.

The construction has a number of options that will effect the final ride.  These options are more varied than with high density foam.  One such option is if the skins wrap the rails, or stop before the rails.  Wrapping the rails creates a stiffer more rebounding board.  One last component is sealing the skin prior to lamination.  It’s possible to laminate the skin to the EPS core without sealing it, but sealing it first, can create a uniform depth of resin between the board and core.

We’re testing the stiffness and depth of penetration on a sample of balsa sheet.  Many more tests to come!

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If you haven’t seen it, you have to take a look.  Warrick Bell of saltlesssurfer.com is attempting to set a Guiness Book of World Records by wakesurfing for 24 hours straight!

Warrick has podiumed in the World Wakesurfing Championships, Texas State Wakesurfing Championships and North West Wakesurf Association’s Open.  Warrick also is a team rider with Inland Surfer.  Warrick was born in South Africa and he has the accent to prove it, but is currently a resident of Chicago, IL.

You can go to the Saltlesssurfer website to see Warrick live while he goes for the record by wakesurfing for 24 hours straight! 

Here is some of the streaming video captured of his historic attempt.  Make the record Warrick, we are all behind you! 

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When we prepare a wakesurf board for shipping, the first thing we do is to apply the traction.   We basically work from the back forward and also from the center of the board outward.  If you can get the center pieces straight down the middle, the outside pieces attach easily.

We start with quality Astrodeck traction, the rear pad is the Beaker Pad, which is my favorite.

The first thing we do is roughly place the rear traction, as we said, back to front. We like this to be as far back as possible and so align trhe rear of the pad with the last horizontal surface.  This shows a rough placement without actually sticking it down.

Once the three piece tail piece is laid out, we attach the middle arch bar using the rear edges of the side pieces as an alignment point.  The side pieces are NOT attached at this point, just left loose on the surface of the wakesurf board.

Then we apply the sides of the rear traction leaving a slight gap to allow for wider feet, smaller feet don’t need this gap.

Next we roughly lay out the three front traction pads so that we have the correct distance between the front and rear traction.  Adjust it and measure the distance to make sure it’s at the correct spot.

The same process is used as with the tail, middle first trying to be careful that the traction is aligned down the center of the board and then work outward towards the rails.

After the traction is down, we move on to the fins, which we’ll show in the next post. 

Technorati Tags: composite sandwich, flyboy wakesurf, flyboywakesurf, flyboywakesurf.com, James Walker, Wakesurf, wakesurf board, Wakesurf boards, wakesurfer, Wakesurfing

As we mentioned in the previous post, the rocker felt off when riding the prototype wakesurfboard and we wanted to adjust that for a better, faster, moree responsive ride.  As this is merely a prototype, we build it to minimize the “hassle” when doing adjustments.  Yesterday we created a “ghetto press” to remove some of the rocker and luckily we had hot weather here in California and were able to leave it in the sun during the day to flatten out the rocker some. 

The board out of the “ghetto press” and you can see that the rocker is diminished some.

Not a true measure of nose rocker, but it shows that the “ghetto press” did it’s job.  The wakesurf board on the left is James’ contest board and the wakesurf board on the right is our prototype – almost identical.

It’s a little tough to tell, but the board on the bottom is the longer prototype.  The apex is moved forward about 2 inches, giving a slightly longer “running surface”, which is what we want for taller riders.  This longer running area will also help with heavier riders also.

Now you know some of the tricks of the trade!   You can actually do this to just about any board without a center stringer.  Molded or stringerless boards can be “managed” in this way.  There is a formula that we have developed for our construction that gives us the amount of “movement” based upon the hours left in the “ghetto press” which is why we we able to get the adjust virtual perfect.

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We documented the final step in the wakesurf board prototype build process and took the board out to test.  The ride was ok, but not up to the performance of the FlyBoy Wakesurf Board name. 

The rocker feels a bit off and I think we have an idea of what it is.  The rocker bed that we used was off the James Walker Signature model.  Simply adding an inch to the tail and nose would add rocker to both the nose and tail, which would impact the quality of the ride.  We attempted to adjust the rocker on the bed while attaching the skins, but it didn’t seem to be enough.

Now, if you know about epoxy, you know that it needs a post cure to reach it’s full strength.  We have specifically NOT done a post cure, in anticipation that we might need to reshape the rocker.  What we can do, when all we have is a minimal adjustment, is to turn the board upside down and weight it and then place it in the mid day heat, which will “loosen” things up hopefully enough to make a change in the rocker.  The high tech adjustment device.

We have weighted the apex and supported the ends where we want to affect a change in the rocker.  We’ll check the rocker tomorrow in the afternoon to see if we have made a change.  The change we are looking for is very minimal, so hopefully, we’ll achieve that.

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In the last blog post we finished up the external lamination on the prototype wakesurf board, in this post we’ll document the installation of the Futures fin boxes.  Futures offers an installation jig and you’ll see that in this post.

This prototype is wider than the James Walker Signature model and so we had to place the fins in a different position to take advantage of the width.  The installtion of the fins, is normally done UNDER the lamination, but since we are just guessing about this fin box install, there is a likelihood that the guess will be wrong.  Rather than fabricating a new board, we will merely route out the boxes and reinstall a new set in a different location.  By not laminating the boxes in, it’s easier to do this relocation process.  So, with that, on to the pictures documention the FlyBoy Wakesurf Board 2011 4.7 prototype fin box installation.

Tape is applied to the board to protect the artwork and to make measuring and marking easier and more visible.

The fin box placement is measured out and then the box location marked out on the tape.

The Futures installation jig and router cutting the holes for the first fin box.

This pictures shows the boxes being test fitted.

Once all the holes are cut, a “shop” set of fins is installed into the boxes to aid in setting the cant of the fins. The boxes will be epoxied in place and held in place with tape while the epoxy cures.

All glued up and ready to ride!

That is the complete build, the board is now fully ready to ride and we’ll go out and test the overall feel and shape.  A LOT of that is strictly seat-of-the-pants, but we’ll also observe orientation into the wake and compare it to the FlyBoy Wakesurf Board James Walker Signature model.

Technorati Tags: composite sandwich, James Walker, wake surf, Wakesurf, wakesurf board, Wakesurf boards, wakesurfer, Wakesurfing