Road trip! We are on our way to the ’12 WWSC and have packed our bags for the trip! We are taking six boards with us! Four are for James, sort of a quiver, if you will and they also act as backups. We’ve experienced some significant variations in wake and wake shape behind the Enzo 244 this year, so hopefully we have the right board for the job with us!
This is what that looks like!!!! Is that wild or what? We have more boards than suitcases 
A few pictures from along the way! We’ll have driven close to 12 hours and while it’s nice to have that time together, we’re still talking 12 hours!!!!
Lots of driving before the sun came up!
The Mountains outside Bakersfield
…and one last one at the resort. We have a bunch more that are in our Flyboy Webshots album, but the internet connection here is really bad, so we couldn’t really post more. The three we posted took close to an hour! We hope we can share some more in our posts, but you can double click on any of the pictures to be taken to the album where you can see all of them.
We’ve been to each WWSC since 2003, we’ve only missed the very first down in Mission Bay, which was long before wakesurfing was recognized as a sport like it is today. The original few contests were all held here in Northern California, Lake Yosemite in Merced and Clear Lake, also on the Delta down in Stockton. For many years the contest was part of Boardstock, but went out on it’s own when that event was starting to struggle with under age drinking violations and subsequent venue troubles.
In 2008, the location of the WWSC started moving around! It went to Nashville Tennesse, the very first time that the event was held outside of California. That was in downtown Nashville and it was great fun to walk down the streets of Nashville carring a small surfboard Those were the days before the division of surf and skim, so the men’s podium was mostly skim style riders with our own James Walker being the lone surf style rider. Here is a picture from the men’s pro open, check hairboy…err, James Walker on the far right in fourth place and a very YOUNG Keenan Flegle in fifth. It is interesting to see Tommy Czechin in third, back then he was running his own board company, now of course he rides for Liquid Force and can you see Dom on the Calibrated? Also a current Liquid Force rider.
One picture from James’ run that year, the only surf style rider to make the podium. That has been one of the biggest arguments against combining the classes, if surf style riders can’t make the podium, as witnessed here 1 in 5 isn’t great oods, then you force folks to ride a different style or board and that just wasn’t reflective of the reality of the sport.
2009 was a pause in the event. There was a meltdown in the financial markets that literally crippled boat manufacturers and retailers, so the WWSC took a year off, but lucky for us, it came roaring back in 2010!
2010 saw a change in the organizing committee, Todd Gaughan took over the top spot and promptly moved the contest from Tennnesse to Minnesota! Actually as we’ve seen with the 10K Lakes Open, Minnesota is one of the hotbeds of wakesurf action. This was the first year that the pro level divisions were split into surf and skim and our very own James Walker had introduced his own board brand, Flyboy Wakesurf and he brought home the HARDWARE! James will always be known as the very first WWSC – Men’s Surf Style champion. This was also seen as a transition year from Centurion dog and pony show to a legitimate contest. For the first time in modern memory, Drew Danielo didn’t win the event! Keenan took top honors in the skim division and also the overall title with one of the most incredible standup passes ever witnessed in wakesurf history. Now that was a wild format, it pitted all the skim and surf riders together for a single best of the best and Keenan threw down. Here is James from that first ever men’s pro surf division podium in FIRST PLACE!
2011 took the WWSC to Parker, AZ, it’s current home at the Blue Water Casino. Since rotating the venue, Parker is the only stop that has come up twice in a row. We’re expecting to see another rotation in the coming years, we’ll wait and see what the organizers decide.
So today will be the first day of the event and hopefully we’ll have some pictures and narrative for everyone. Thanks so much for following along and check back tomorrow for highlights of the 2012 World Wake Surfing Championship and hopefully some pictures and video of James Walker wakesurfing.
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