Final Manual Ballast Test - Z3

[ragboy]

So last time we went out it got really windy and we had some problems with our regular side surf corner sac. We pretty much got things working by the time Frank surfed and the wind had died down. I didn't feel like we got a good test, though. It seemed like the regular side was more finicky or different than the goofy side and that has not been the case with any of our other Tiges. They always are the same on both sides. We are heading up to Wakemakers in Oregon next week to install a special system into the boat, but before we did I wanted to make sure that simply adding plug and play sacs in this boat was all that would be needed to create a great competition level wakesurf wake on both sides. We have worked hard every year to provide a great wake and conditions at the West Coast Wakesurf Open.

The weather was great today, it was only a high of 65 but when the Sun was on you, and the wind was down it felt like the high 70s. The water temp was high 50s and up to 60 in a few places. As soon as we got the Z3 out of the slip we situated the sacs carefully this time. We also bought out a second Jumbo V-Drive sac so that we didn't have to move the one we had from one side to the other, which is what caused the problem last time. Once we got that all done we filled up the 2 440s under the side seats all the way, and then the surf corner jumbo. We also filled up the hard tanks under the surf corner floor (250) on both sides and filled up the front completely (1000 total). The jumbos and the side sacs don't fill all the way up but we figured this is as close as we are going to get to simulating the plug and play sacs. No other weight, lead, mods, etc. Also, we carefully made sure that the corner sacs were both setup the same way, and so when we rode each side we made sure each side was weighted as identically as possible including how we adjusted people all day.

Well, the weather held up except for an occasionally gust here and there. The regular wake was just as impressive as the goofy side. We ran the same speeds, the same TAPS (wake plate), and with the same weight the same list angle of about 8ish degrees side to side.

Before I get to the pictures and videos, a few observations.

• This boat has tons of power/push. Dennis rides both sides and weighs about 280 or so and moves back and forth in the wake with ease. Dennis is excellent at "walking the board" and adjusting his weight to get farther back than most guys his size, but he is handicapped when riding backside. He can still adjust, but not with the same skill/ease. So when you see him easily ride back far while backside you know the boat is giving him lots of power back there.
• The Z3 is a$$ heavy and creates a big hole, which has to be where the power is coming from. You really need to ride it, or chase it to see, doesn't come out well in pictures. This also means you have to put a lot of weight up front to compensate for what you put in the back. If you don't put enough weight up front, the boat just digs its butt down and drags and you hear the motor work harder and the wake doesn't work. If you have just a bit too little weight up front, you get more wash. Add some more weight up front and bam, its gorgeous and still tons of power.
• The Z3 handles the weight very well since it uses less of a list and requires lots up front, it is spread all over, which makes for a comfortable ride and since the boat is so deep, nothing feels remotely extreme. We are not going for a "slammed" wake here, but a great comp wakesurf wake. We still have 4 to 6 inches of room before the water comes to the rub rail.
• The rollers this thing puts out our meaty. Dennis was comparing the shape of the curl to Chopu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teahupo'o) and if you watch from the chase boat I swear you could surf the second set behind the main wake. At least RJ or Thomas probably could.

Here is the first pic of Rob Harrington, and I slid the camera off the side so you could see how much room we have to the rub rail.



Another great shot of Rob on the regular side.



Dennis riding backside, and still heading way back. Yes, he rides this out, this is not a pic of him falling out. 6'2" and 280lbs.





Jesse got her turn, and first goofy shot of the day.



Thomas was just barely getting air last year, and starting to get back to it.





Maddie doesn't like the cold but braves it to surf.





RJ can ride very far back and recover easily, partly because he has a fast board, and partly because he can pump pretty well.



RJ is starting to edge out more on those bottom turns. This is the 4'8" Fang Tail from Soulcraft and is the best board I have seen him on to date. Fast, fun and forgiving. (We do have a new Shred Stixx chaos custom coming in soon, that should also be fun.)



This is an easy recovery for him, but I have seen Chris Wolter come back from farther.



He really likes the shape and the lip, and he seems to boost off of it really well.



RJ has a hard time full on grabbing the board, but usually gives it a good slap, rub, or tickle.



I think this was my favorite air shot of the day.



This is a good shot of Dennis riding goofy and you can see when he gets down into the trough the wake is about to his waist.



Yes, no tricks, he surfed this back in.





Great day but I know some of the pictures you don't quite get a good perspective, and especially the ones with Dennis riding way in the back may seem like shots of him falling out, so I threw together some quick raw footage. No slow mo or music, just raw GoPro2 at 720P60 mounted on the gunwale halfway from from the rear seat to the back corner.



We are off to Oregon in a week to visit wakemakers.com and I now feel confident we are ready. We are having way too much fun so early in the season.

[Wakeman22]

Very very very nice wave you have. Looks like a lot of push even from further back. Nice face and smooth. I need a Z3 now. One shot looks like it can easialy compete with others in the surf wake size competetion. Love everything you post. Thanks for sharing. Ragboy you are the man.

[jbort]

Looks great. Super pics and vid.

[ecutter]

Ragboy, I have the Pro Ballast set up on my Z3. Havent been able to get the wave dialed in like you guys have. Only been out twice with windy conditions. You mention using two additional 440lbs sacs under the side seats and then a surf corner jumbo bag. How big is this bag? And what bags fit under the side seats? Are they custom? Was this a plug and play replacing the Pro surf v locker bags? How much weight are you running up front. Are you filling both or just filling the surf side front all the way? Also I would like to increase the speed of which I can go from Goofy to Regular. I assume your trip to Wakemakers will address this as well. Feed back needed.. Lots of questions Sorry! Just dont want to spend all Summer trying to figure this out. Also, what's up with the new taps plate?? My boat didnt come with it and my local dealer asked Tige about it.. No response from them yet??

[ragboy]

I will answer in detail this afternoon, gonna ride the motorbike to church, nice day....

This boat is way different than any tige before, weights totally differently, at least that is my experience. Will explain later today.

[majestic]

The video at the 2:00 minute mark where Dennis submarines the board and doesn't have to work too hard to catch back up shows me how much power/push the wave has.

Too bad it didn't work out for me this weekend! Maybe someday I can ride that boat

[hyphen79]

The video at the 2:00 minute mark where Dennis submarines the board and doesn't have to work too hard to catch back up shows me how much power/push the wave has.

Too bad it didn't work out for me this weekend! Maybe someday I can ride that boat

WoW!

I can't tell you how many times I have submarined my board. That was a fantastic recovery. I watched it about 4 times in disbelief.

Would love to get behind that boat and ride that wave. It's NUTS!
Keep those videos coming. It's always a good day when there is a new video to watch.

[ragboy]

I will have to do Slomo on that, water came to his ankles, he has done that before, bu not like that. Few wakes could he have recovered on.

[ragboy]

Thanks, we are having WAY too much fun with this boat...

The video at the 2:00 minute mark where Dennis submarines the board and doesn't have to work too hard to catch back up shows me how much power/push the wave has.

Too bad it didn't work out for me this weekend! Maybe someday I can ride that boat

Gonna miss ya, I was looking forward to it. I am very glad we get to only go to Bend now, instead of all the way to portland. You have ridden our RZ2 and the modded 24Ve, and you know they had tons of push, can you believe this one has more?

WoW!

I can't tell you how many times I have submarined my board. That was a fantastic recovery. I watched it about 4 times in disbelief.

Would love to get behind that boat and ride that wave. It's NUTS!
Keep those videos coming. It's always a good day when there is a new video to watch.

You have no excuse, you are in Reno. You just need to get it on the calendar and make the short trek. Sup with that? ;-)

Ragboy, I have the Pro Ballast set up on my Z3. Havent been able to get the wave dialed in like you guys have. Only been out twice with windy conditions. You mention using two additional 440lbs sacs under the side seats and then a surf corner jumbo bag. How big is this bag? And what bags fit under the side seats? Are they custom? Was this a plug and play replacing the Pro surf v locker bags? How much weight are you running up front. Are you filling both or just filling the surf side front all the way? Also I would like to increase the speed of which I can go from Goofy to Regular. I assume your trip to Wakemakers will address this as well. Feed back needed.. Lots of questions Sorry! Just dont want to spend all Summer trying to figure this out. Also, what's up with the new taps plate?? My boat didnt come with it and my local dealer asked Tige about it.. No response from them yet??

I really don't know on the TAPS plate, and I don't know how much it helps, I think it helps a good amount. There still is more wash than I like to see when you take taps to 1 and 2, and cleans up at about 3 for us. Would be great if there was some way to get rid of the low taps wash...

I have found for most boats to play and test, 2 pumps, 2 V-Drive 440s (http://www.wakemakers.com/fly-high-v-drive-sacs.html) and then 2 jumbo v-drive sacs @ 1100 lbs (http://www.wakemakers.com/fly-high-jumbo-surf-sac.html). We use the 440s under the side seats, just in front of the end of the jumbos after you stuff the jumbos in the rear lockers. I would guess we are getting 800 or so in the jumbos and then 300 or so in the 440s. Make sure you first fill the rear corners until water starts to enter the stock sack and stop. You don't want to put weight on that tank, empty.

So we are filling front ALL the way, and this important, if you are going to surf in this boat, get the pro ballast. It needs all of that weight up there, its a must. Then we fill a jumbo in surf corner on top of 250 hard tank, and just the hard tank on opposite surf corner. Side sacs full on both sides, we through kids up front, cuz it STILL needs ~200 lbs or so up front to keep the wake perfect and clean. Then we adjust the rest of the people to make sure we are at about 8 degrees list at rest, and 11-11.6 mph, we seem to stick to 11.2 and 11.4, even for the big guys. Taps at 4 has been just about perfect, RJ likes it up to 5 for more height.

Think about that, that is as much weight needed up front, as we are putting on the surf side, just about. Its weird, if you don't have enough weight up front, imagine a dog that just took a nasty and starts dragging his butt around the grass. The tail of the Z3 just sinks in and the motor has to work much harder to keep it at 11mph, and the wake is washed and ugly. Get all that weight up front and the wake takes that beautiful shape, the motor relaxes and it still has more push that you will ever need. Its really hard to tell from the pictures, but its a hill from the back of the swim step to the and of that curl, its a hill. I mean, of course that should always be an incline, but its much more pronounced on this boat, even compared to the 24Ve slammed.

You can see in the pictures I am no where NEAR the rub rail, we are barely listed over and my wife doesn't even bat an eye. It feels so completely safe, I am guessing this thing would need like 4500 lbs of ballast to put the rub rail down in a configuration that would surf great. Cuz you have to weight it down all over. So different than what we have been used to.

Also, we used to run 400-500 or so up front in the RZ2 when weighted with our plug and play custom sacs. That worked well, and you just had to pay attention to rollers and stuff. Sometimes if conditions allowed, we would fill both sides up front for 800 lbs and it would make a longer wave, nice, but you wouldn't want to do that in chop. It just didn't feel very safe to me unless it was a weekday with no wind. One time, with no one on the lake, we put 1100 up front on the RZ2 to see how long we could get the wake, and it was fun, but again, it was just an experiment, and we didn't do again, didn't feel safe. We only put 500 lbs up front on the slammed 24Ve.

This thing we have 1200 lbs and every bit is needed, no one is even worried about the front, the boat just takes it. I would still not do this on a busy weekend day probably but the boat is so deep, and the pointed bow, it just works.

Oh yeah, one last thing. We got this boat with 1 hour on it and filled it up. We filled it up yesterday when we went out, it took 40 gallons exactly and it had 10 hours on it. That's 4.45 GPH with the 409 and ~3000lbs of ballast plus people. Its not even broken in. That means we can surf all day without refueling, and easy 10 hours when our Enzo friends are coming in around lunch time. I am guessing its gonna end up around 4 GPH.

4GPH!

It doesn't get much better than that when gas is up over $5/gallon at the marina. So when someone says you can get an Enzo for $10k cheaper, don't worry, you will get it back QUICK! ;-)

[ecutter]

Thanks, we are having WAY too much fun with this boat...



Gonna miss ya, I was looking forward to it. I am very glad we get to only go to Bend now, instead of all the way to portland. You have ridden our RZ2 and the modded 24Ve, and you know they had tons of push, can you believe this one has more?



You have no excuse, you are in Reno. You just need to get it on the calendar and make the short trek. Sup with that? ;-)



I really don't know on the TAPS plate, and I don't know how much it helps, I think it helps a good amount. There still is more wash than I like to see when you take taps to 1 and 2, and cleans up at about 3 for us. Would be great if there was some way to get rid of the low taps wash...

I have found for most boats to play and test, 2 pumps, 2 V-Drive 440s (http://www.wakemakers.com/fly-high-v-drive-sacs.html) and then 2 jumbo v-drive sacs @ 1100 lbs (http://www.wakemakers.com/fly-high-jumbo-surf-sac.html). We use the 440s under the side seats, just in front of the end of the jumbos after you stuff the jumbos in the rear lockers. I would guess we are getting 800 or so in the jumbos and then 300 or so in the 440s. Make sure you first fill the rear corners until water starts to enter the stock sack and stop. You don't want to put weight on that tank, empty.

So we are filling front ALL the way, and this important, if you are going to surf in this boat, get the pro ballast. It needs all of that weight up there, its a must. Then we fill a jumbo in surf corner on top of 250 hard tank, and just the hard tank on opposite surf corner. Side sacs full on both sides, we through kids up front, cuz it STILL needs ~200 lbs or so up front to keep the wake perfect and clean. Then we adjust the rest of the people to make sure we are at about 8 degrees list at rest, and 11-11.6 mph, we seem to stick to 11.2 and 11.4, even for the big guys. Taps at 4 has been just about perfect, RJ likes it up to 5 for more height.

Think about that, that is as much weight needed up front, as we are putting on the surf side, just about. Its weird, if you don't have enough weight up front, imagine a dog that just took a nasty and starts dragging his butt around the grass. The tail of the Z3 just sinks in and the motor has to work much harder to keep it at 11mph, and the wake is washed and ugly. Get all that weight up front and the wake takes that beautiful shape, the motor relaxes and it still has more push that you will ever need. Its really hard to tell from the pictures, but its a hill from the back of the swim step to the and of that curl, its a hill. I mean, of course that should always be an incline, but its much more pronounced on this boat, even compared to the 24Ve slammed.

You can see in the pictures I am no where NEAR the rub rail, we are barely listed over and my wife doesn't even bat an eye. It feels so completely safe, I am guessing this thing would need like 4500 lbs of ballast to put the rub rail down in a configuration that would surf great. Cuz you have to weight it down all over. So different than what we have been used to.

Also, we used to run 400-500 or so up front in the RZ2 when weighted with our plug and play custom sacs. That worked well, and you just had to pay attention to rollers and stuff. Sometimes if conditions allowed, we would fill both sides up front for 800 lbs and it would make a longer wave, nice, but you wouldn't want to do that in chop. It just didn't feel very safe to me unless it was a weekday with no wind. One time, with no one on the lake, we put 1100 up front on the RZ2 to see how long we could get the wake, and it was fun, but again, it was just an experiment, and we didn't do again, didn't feel safe. We only put 500 lbs up front on the slammed 24Ve.

This thing we have 1200 lbs and every bit is needed, no one is even worried about the front, the boat just takes it. I would still not do this on a busy weekend day probably but the boat is so deep, and the pointed bow, it just works.

Oh yeah, one last thing. We got this boat with 1 hour on it and filled it up. We filled it up yesterday when we went out, it took 40 gallons exactly and it had 10 hours on it. That's 4.45 GPH with the 409 and ~3000lbs of ballast plus people. Its not even broken in. That means we can surf all day without refueling, and easy 10 hours when our Enzo friends are coming in around lunch time. I am guessing its gonna end up around 4 GPH.

4GPH!

It doesn't get much better than that when gas is up over $5/gallon at the marina. So when someone says you can get an Enzo for $10k cheaper, don't worry, you will get it back QUICK! ;-)

Thanks Rag!!! Appreciate the info.. What's your plans on the custom set up?

[Timmy!]

Get out there and surf it up Eric (ecutter)! You have to remember that ragboy is trying to build a competition worthy wave here, the out of the box surf wave is pretty awesome and probably good for 75% of the surfers out there!

[ragboy]

The stock wave is good, I think in the near future, what we would have considered the comp wake in the past will become more the norm. On this boat, the amazing part to me is that with the engineering and thought that went into it, going to a more "comp" setup feels like just a stroll around the lake in the sense that the boat is not listed way over, water isn't anywhere near the rub rail, and the bow weight feels totally manageable.

Makes me want to call up the Hoffmans and give them a ride on the wakeboard wake and see what they think.

[Booms]

Ragboy - Do you want to come out to WI and dial in my RZ2? I see a market for you traveling around and dialing in peoples waves. You and RJ get to see the country and get paid to do what you love!

[wired1236]

We are off to Oregon in a week to visit wakemakers.com and I now feel confident we are ready. We are having way too much fun so early in the season.[/QUOTE]

You will be just down the road but why come to Oregon in the WET season? Would love to see the setup if you have time.

[ragboy]

I think we are going to the lake on Saturday, I will post when I have the details.