Wakesurf board bottom shape design

Are you ready class! Actually we aren’t sure we’re qualified to instruct here, we just want to pass along what we think is a bonafide wakesurf board concept and how we’re going to address it.

So we have done some amazing artwork again! Doesn’t that stuff just make you think crayons?

Let’s review a few things here so that we are all on the same page. We’ve spent a considerable amount of time attempting to undo the “push” concept and focus on the water flow UP the face of the wake. Now we know that our bottom shapes are for the most part, static. That is once we shape a bottom concave, it keeps that same shape, regardless of the orientation of the wakesurf board to the wake and waterflow. The concave, by definition, will have the apex in the middle of the arc somewhere and as the water that climbs the face of the board, hits the outside of the concaves it is channeled towards the middle, following the curve as it is forced upward. We though about it like a shovel. If you took your garden hose and sprayed it at the open end of a shovel the direction of the water flow would be redirected and some of the spray would shoot out the end of the shovel face.

Obviously some of the stream will splash all over but at the correct angle, the majority will be redirected off the end of the shovel and it will also flatten out. The spray that leaves the shovel will no longer be in the small round stream coming from the end of the hose, instead it will be a flat stream the width of the shovel blade. We don’t want to complicate the concept, but that changing of the shape from tight and round to wide and flat will enter our discussion later.

So when our wakesurf board is in trim just gliding along the wake, the water coming up the face hits the bottom of the board, some of that flow catches the angle of the concave and is channeled upward and inward. The concave is not drastic, but does redirect the water flow from UP to inward towards the middle of the board. There is still UP somewhat, because the concave has some depth, but it’s not very much.

So artwork time

In the first picture, you can see how the shape of the concave causes the waterflow (blue vertical lines) to be redirected towards the center of the wakesurf board (purple arrows)

That shape sure seems pretty optimum for channeling water flow up and at that point it has to go forward or backwards and that will be determined by the rocker shape. The flow, like most things in nature, will take the path of least resistance. If the rocker shape is such that the water can quickly and easily exit the tail of the board, we’ll have the most efficient shape, we do believe.

But what happens when that same concave is put on edge? Like when you are turning the wakesurf board? The outside edge of the concave no longer acts to shift water up and back towards the center, instead that outside curve is shaped to allow some water to escape out and awy from the center of the board off to the opposite rail. You can see that “image” in the second amazing drawing. If we can assume for this discussion that the first picture is the optimum for capturing and channeling water flow, then changing that in any way would present a sub-optimal shape. BUT what if we could retain that original shape in some fashion or more closely resembles the original shape then the more that “morphed” bottom will be to the optimal shape.

Next amazing piece of artwork! If we could somehow allow the bottom to morph and change shapes so that the bottom concave was closer to the optimum shape, the wakesurf board would capture more of the waterflow and channel more of it to the back of the board than if we had a static concave. Sort of like this

We’re not sure just how much shape changing we can get or if the dynamic nature of the bottom helps or hinders the ride or if that dynamic nature doesn’t induce OTHER issues, but that is the area we are wanting to pursue at this time, bottom shapes that are dynamic and can change to the most optimal shape within the conditions present, without being so floppy that the ride quality is lost while wakesurfing.

That’s the design concept we are shooting to test, we’ll talk about the build in the next few days.

Thanks so much for following along!

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