10K Lakes Open Wakesurf Contest

The next and final qualifier for the World Wake Surf Championship is the 10K Lakes Open Wakesurf Contest in Minnesota on Long Lake. If you’re like us from the West Coast, you’re used to your land being fenced in and your possessions all locked up. Minnesota is very different in that regard. Fences in a backyard are almost unheard of. When we’ve talked about an average tract home here in California having 6,000 square foot lots and that all he back is fenced in with 6 foot high wooden fences, the folks from Minnesota look at you in disbelief! We think that is one of the great things about contests like this, it gives you a chance to sample some of the local culture from around the country. We sort of prefer not having snow so deep you’re trapped in your house for days at a time, but the friendly folks and slower pace of the area are very welcoming. When we travel to other parts of the country WE typically have accents to the local residents, but man-oh-man is it ever hard to decipher “boooot” as meaning BOAT Definately some different dialects in the mid west.

James is on his way, here he is at SMF where we dumped him! Good luck James and have great rides! We hope you’ll join us in wishing James Walker the best of luck and conditions at the 10K Lakes Open Wakesurf Contest

The 10K Lakes Open wakesurf contest is in it’s second year and the first connected with the CWSA and World Series of Wake Surfing. This years contest will be pulled by a new Nautigue G23. Now this boat was just released by Natique this year and has created a bunch of buzz. The boat itself weighs in around 6,000 pounds and has factory ballast close to 2,800 pounds, total.

Here is a rough picture of the wake, this is stock with a few people. We’ve heard that a bunch of the riders got a chance to dial in the regular wake so the G23 is looking viable as surf boat.

We’ll see how the wake shapes up this year, once the contest starts. One of the reasons we really like the wake behind our Supreme V226 is the transition. It develops a solid wake easily and still maintains the ramp going up to the lip. We like the concept of looking at what tricks are landed during a contest video as a guage of the quality of the wake. James came away from the Koocanusa Wakesurf Challange last weekend landing two backside big spins, we’ll see how many he is able to land behind the G23.

This contest is the first and only of the World Series of Wake Surfing qualifying events to sell out this year. It’s expected to be a really well attended event. Minnesota is a hot bed of wakesurfing activity with a core group keeping the contest environment active. You can follow much of that group’s activity on Midwestwakesurfing.com

iDOL surf boards will be displaying a stream of the event.  You can find that on the iDOL surf home page or their USTREAM page. We understand it’s not live, but recorded and then played from the SD card out of the camera. We aren’t sure of the amount of delay, though.  There may be some updates for timing on that web page.

The contest will be a good one and a challange to everyone. We know that Keenan will be fighting hard to defend his title from last year and James is going to want to redeem himself from his third place finish last year. The location is in open water and that does impose some difficulties on folks with rollers and wind. We’ll root for James and hope he brings home another first place finish! James has down quite well in the World Wake Surfing Series so far, with two first place finishes and one second place in the three events James Walker has attended this year…in the surf style division and some fourth place finishes in skim. James will be taking a new skim board with him to ride at the 10K Lakes Open. James isn’t liking the traction on it very much, but that’ll be an easy swap once James gets back, if the wakesurf board itself doesn’t need any changes.

James is very thankful to all of his sponsors, including Inland Surfer, Flyboy Wakesurf Boards Ski Supreme boats, Towanza.com, Wakes Shredder clothing, Hydro Turf Traction, Exile Audio and Liquid Trends Audio. Their belief and support in James, as well as financial contributions, make it possible for him to attend these contests. James fan base is very diverse and traveling to these events is about the only way he can reach out to as many of them as possible. James enjoys meeting everyone and being able to wakesurf for folks locally. Videos are nice, but there just isn’t anything that compares to seeing some of those tricks landed in person. James makes every effort to get out to these contests so that you, his fan base and folks that enjoy James’ style of progressive riding, can see it in person! Thanks to all of the folks that follow James and his riding and to his loyal customers!

Thanks again for following along, we appreciate it and hopefully we’ll have some results from the 10K Lakes Open

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