24Ve Bow Weighting

[IDBoating]

We've had lots of discussions here about weighting the 24Ve. Last season we discovered that the starboard (goofy) side wave really benefits from additional bow weight. We tossed a 400 pound fat sac up there, along with the ~250 we get from the under-seat sacs, and the goofy side just got better and better.

Yesterday we decided to play around with the same principle on the port (normal) side wave. Bottom line: An extra 100 pounds (total of ~350) was about the limit. Above that the wave broke apart toward the back end, such that it yielded no "push" and become unrecoverable even for my 14YO son, who is a master of coming back from seemingly infinite distances.

We played with speed, TAPS, longitudinal hull angle, everything. There just seems to be a top end to the useful bow weight in the 24Ve if you're surfing starboard.

Just tossing this out there as data for other people's experiments. Share what you learn!

[Thegerman618]

Good info, I tried a new sac in the bow this season and found that 1000 is way to much weight in the bow. Wave was flat and not able to even create a surfable wave. That being said, no weight in the rear and the 1000 in the bow created one of the best wakeboard Wakes I have seen in some time.

[duffymahoney]

I run about 350+ in my bow with a small crew, large crew I rock both sacs and lead.

[BCRider]

Last night in my 22ve I was running 1500lbs in port ballast. 4-200lbs guys and had my front U shaped sac as full as it would allow plus another 150lbs on the seat. I typically don't run any bow weight unless I'm really heavy.....then I find I benefit from it to get the bow back down.

Starboard side I always run bow weight. Truthfully I find I get a cleaner goofy wake than regular with less overall weight.

11.4 mph with taps at 4-5. Running heavier last night I was running at 4.

[IDBoating]

We did find that we could run TAPS higher than usual with the excess bow weight. Normally we get the cleanest wave at TAPS 2-3, with 4 starting to trash the top edge of the wave near the swim platform. With the extra 400 pounds and surfing normal (port), we could go to TAPS 5+ without trashing the wave... but the tail end would deteriorate as described earlier. Ultimately the reduction in the length of the "sweet spot" region wasn't worth any other perceived improvement.

[duffymahoney]

Crazy, I love bow weight. I was surfing yesterday at 12.5. I had 200 lead in the bow and 250-350 bow surf side. Then 1850 on port, 200 in lead on port and starboard in the lockers, nice, fast and meaty wave.

[Stingreye]

WA, have you tried with your waketouch and autowake sensors to emulate the list angle / bow rise angle of your best normal wave but now add bow weight and keep adding rear weight until the list and bow rise match your previous best but with more displacement?

I have wondered if the 24V and 24VE have different prop shaft angles, from anecdotal comments it seems alot of VE owners run less bow weight and V owners seems to run more. Isn't the hull running surface slightly different too?

[IDBoating]

No, this was a very informal "Let's try THIS!" session. We've been kinda busy with various projects, including one involving Tige TouchPads....

I'm not sure the goal is to match angles with more overall displacement, though that's a good question. Seems to me (totally off the cuff here) that the bow weight's improvement in the starboard wave had to do with LOWERING the bow (i.e. changing the lateral axis angle), not just increasing overall hull displacement.

Very worthy of additional experimentation - when we get the time!

[rywurm]

I run a 2004 Tige 24ve limited....and it loves a ton of bow weight.
1100 pound fat sac in the front and 900 pounds on the surf side and about 500 on the opposite side + wake shaper and you have a very nice wave. And then we can distribute people evenly and more comfortably.