Bonzer wakesurf fin pod

Last week was a blast with all the wakesurfing we’ve been doing, it’s good to have the nicer weather, but it’s also brought out the rest of the boaters! Lots of tubes and PWC’s on our lake, so it’s hard to really concentrate on wakesurfing. We have been enjoying the cool water though, with air temps hovering around the 105 mark here in Northern California! We wanted to show off our newest wakesurf board and talk briefly about the bottom and this rather unique wakesurf fin pod.

Here is a quick picture of the Bonzer wakesurf fin pod and we’ll warn you that we took some pictures with the side runners switched. There is a front and a back side fin and we had those swapped. HOWEVER, here is the correct set up for a 5 fin Bonzer.

The Campbel Brothers, and they still shape boards under that label, created the first Bonzer (pronounced BON ZER) as a three fin model. Very similar in placement to a thruster, but the side runners were never of significant depth. The first Bonzers were shaped back around 1970. In the picture above it’s hard to see, but the bottom shape is particular to the 5 fin Bonzer, it is a single to double concave and the Campbells are credited for first creating it. We’ll show you a picture of the double concave through the fins, next.  The first 5 fin Bonzer was shaped by the Campbell’s around 1983′ish.

Serious double concave, huh?! Up closer to the nose, the board has a single concave and then this double concave takes over closer to the fins. The theory here is that the the extremely long fin base and the double concaves, capture some of the water that is rushing out the sides of the wakesurf board and channels it back out the tail, basically capturing some of that lost energy. Folks swear by their 5 fin Bonzers.

The next element of the Bonzer 5 is the cant of the side runners. They are REALLY significant and there is a theory behind that, the picture:

Can you make them out? Hopefully you can see how much of an angle those fins have. The function is to allow the wakesurf board to still grab water flow when the board is leaned way over on rail. PLUS, that extra cant will grab tons of flow up the face of the wake. The Campbell’s really had a great grasp of hydrodynamics and developed systems to manage the water flow.

Pretty wild, huh? There are some other features that it’s hard to show in the pictures, but we’ll try and describe them for you.

First some pictures of the deck and bottom so you can clearly see the outline and relative height compared to a standard door.

So here is the first of two pictures showing the outline, this obviously is the deck side. Doesn’t it look like the nose is on the floor? It’s not, that’s the tail, the nose is pointing towards the ceiling!

Now the bottom which will give you an idea of the wakesurf fin placement.

Pretty sweet, huh?

Ok, now what you can’t really see is that up at the nose the rails are beveled. Normally the rails of your wakesur board up at the nose are rounded, or soft so that they don’t hang up, but hey also don’t help “steer” very well. The bevel is a very shapr hard section of the rail that allows the rider to sort of steer the board with weight shifts while riding the nose. The idea is that when we are up and the nose the board will still want to wander some as there is almost no weight back by the fins and the bevels, while not perfect, are a tremendous aid for steering, plus they release water like crazy

So there you have it, we’re hoping to get it out in the water this afternoon, so hopefully we’ll have some pictures of James Walker wakesurfing it, for you soon. Also, we hope that this rather unique project brings a few things to mind. One is that wakesurf does NOT need to be skim boards and short boards. Those are self-imposed limits and also limits that are force fed us by the pundits that really just don’t know jack. There is an entire world of surfcraft that hasn’t made it into wakesurfing and YOU’RE missing out because folks somehow think some yahoo with an ego spouting crap is smarter than you! They aren’t! You know what you want and your ideas are most likely BETTER than those folks with ridiculously inflated egos. There are lots of wakesurf specific shapers that can make your dreams a reality. and you can try something like this handy little nose rider.

Thanks so much for following along and we hope you are enjoying your summer!

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