West Coast Open and the Z3

[ragboy]

I thought you guys might want to see this amazing recovery by Ford Chupik, and shows off the amazing venue and wake.

Fellow Tige owners Chris Martinez (majestic) and Alan Kendall (squid) pulled some serious duty in the Z3, and I am so thankful. CM is def at the level of Z3 wakeologist at this point, and I am sure Kendall is at least at Padowan Learner. ;-)

[mls6722]

That is amazing. Great video quality also Ragboy.

[skippabcool]

Very cool

[Timmy!]

Dang! He worked the crap out of that board! I got exhausted just watching him! Nice job Ford!

[majestic]

Look how clean the wake is and remember that was a skim set-up. It's funny how good we got at dialing the wake in. On Saturday we would test between switching sides and maybe go for a 2 minute run with no rider and make adjustments. On Sunday we would go maybe a 20 to 30 second run and it was good.

Also note we could switch sides in under 5 minutes. No goofy/regular boat needed and I believe on Saturday which was the long day we only burned 24 gallons of fuel and ran the boat close to 9 hours.

[Iwndr]

That is amazing. Great video quality also Ragboy.

Very cool

Dang! He worked the crap out of that board! I got exhausted just watching him! Nice job Ford!

X4 WOW Awesome recovery Ford and and beautiful wake Ragboy

[skippabcool]

No goofy/regular boat needed and I believe on Saturday which was the long day we only burned 24 gallons of fuel and ran the boat close to 9 hours.

Were there people that were impressed / surprised with the Z3 and it's capabilities?

[Timmy!]

Also note we could switch sides in under 5 minutes. No goofy/regular boat needed and I believe on Saturday which was the long day we only burned 24 gallons of fuel and ran the boat close to 9 hours.

That is very impressive!

[majestic]

Were there people that were impressed / surprised with the Z3 and it's capabilities?

The pro riders on Sunday were very complimentary during their runs. During clinic on Friday there was a Father and Daughter that had a Moomba that may be buying a Tige very soon,

[4bw]

That is amazing

[Allan Kendall]

Padowan Learner, that so cool, I would be higher up the food chain but I tried to start Ragboy's truck with the pontoon keys...

Z3 was awesome. I had a clinic with Sean Cummings on Friday and the wake is so powerfull I felt I could ride one of Ragboy's laptops. clean, big, and the same every time no matter what side you like to kill it.

Finishing my rant I think Chris may have more hours driving your boat then you do.

[ragboy]

Yes, I am real curious to see what the total hours is now on that Z3. That boat is gonna set a record for us.

[jbort]

Allan: LOL on the pontoon key - well ya never know.....

incredible video on Fred recovery - he's in the next county.

Ragboy: what vid cam is used on the tower? factory vid cam? other?

[ragboy]

So to answer the questions about the setup of wake and cameras and such, we made a little video. Check it out, and then we will fill in some of the more geeky details.



It has been our desire for a while to pull this event with one boat. Not just because we have been coined "equal opportunity" wakesurfers and our desire to promote great wakesurf boats that throw great wakes on both sides with the same effort. That is true, but we have shaken that stick enough, right? ;-) There is another benefit that we were focused more heavily on.

Technically, the 2010 Wakesurf Festival was pulled by one boat due to an accident. We learned from that experience that it is a challenge. Normally when you use 2 boats each is set to be perfectly dialed for each side and usually water is only part of the weight, and lead or other more dense, stable ballast is used in addition. In 2010 we were not prepared to tow with one boat and the contest moved slower than we wished. It took a while to move the lead and adjust the system each time we switched sides but we dealt with it and did a decent job.

For 2012 we needed to have a system that would switch from side to side in under 4 minutes, about the same time it would take to move judges and such from one boat to the other and get started. We accomplished this in several ways.

1. We installed a special system in the boat that requires ZERO through hull drilling to quickly move water from one side to the other. This was provided by wakemakers.com and we will be showing that off more thoroughly soon.
2. We installed custom plug and play sacs from wakemakers.com specifically for the Z3 that allowed us to hold the weight we needed without using anything other than water and allowed us to weight the boat without any ballast that wasn't hidden. (We did keep a 440lb sac on the floor that could be filled throughout the day to compensate for loss of weight from using the gas in the tank.)
3. We installed digital scales in the rear lockers to measure more precisely the amount of ballast we were running at any given time.

Here is a picture of the readout part of the scale, the other part is under the bag on the floor of the locker.



The scale part was the part that took a while to figure out, and ended up working extremely well. The scale doesn't measure the weight in the bag and the scale only goes up to 330 lbs. It measures the column of water above the bag. It doesn't need to even be accurate. You just turn the scale on when the bag is empty and it reads ZERO. Then you fill up the bag and it reads say 160 lbs, or whatever. When you let water out the scale goes down, and vice versa. Even though the weight doesn't mean anything, its gives you an accurate mark to hit. So if you dial in the wake with the given conditions and people in the boat, and you note that starboard was at 20 lbs and regular was at 120 lbs, then you just need to hit that same mark when you switch to this side. It worked, but with a couple of caveats. You can NEVER turn the scales off when they are not empty. Every time you turn the scale off and on it zeros the scale. In order to get around this we found scales that did NOT turn off automatically and lasted forever on their batteries, like 3 days (they can also be powered by DC). We also modified the readout/panel to cover the on/off button so that no one could accidentally turn them off during the comp. Cool, huh?

We are not naive enough to think that all would ride behind the Z3 and then want to sell their boats and call Tige. We love our boat, and others love their Centurions and Supremes and Sangers and MBs and "insert brand here". No problem. It was all about hospitality. Chris Martinez was the designated driver and Dennis and RJ would be in the boat at all times and the four of us met to work out how this would work and we were completely committed to giving each rider the best ride we could. We practiced and tested on Thursday and Friday and worked out a few kinks and felt pretty good. On Saturday we were caught off guard by some riders, especially female skim riders that really wanted to slow down. We were ready for taking the taps down to mellow the wake, but that threw us a bit, we tested at 11 mph to 11.6 or so. So we got up early and prepared setups for Sunday based on what everyone wanted the day before and adjusted weight and taps throughout the day using the scales to guide us. The guys in the boat switched faster than we got the pontoon boat of new riders ready on Sunday. They got good at it and we got a lot of positive feedback.

The Other Benefit
So that all goes back to the main reason we took this on. Whenever we transmit for the broadcasts we do, we use one transmitter for each boat. Sometimes one boat or the other will glitch on parts of the course. Its difficult to run more than 2 channels and also to install multiple packages on multiple boats, but multiple packages on one boat seemed doable. It allowed us to have a camera on top of the tower always transmitting, and then use cameras on the transom for the best angle. I have never wanted to use transom cameras before, because they get wet, get banged, they are just in a position to not be the most reliable but yet provide the best view. With the camera on top always transmitting along with the transom cameras, I was able to switch when there were any issues, or just for the hell of it. It worked, and made the broadcast virtually trouble free for the first time. That was very rewarding. We used 2 Hero 2 cameras on the transom and a Hero for the tower camera. All of this was installed in such a way that it could be easily removed without leaving a mark, well, except for the cup holders in the transom. We drilled larger holes in the bottom of the cup holders to run the Hero 2 cables through. It still holds a drink just fine.

It was a challenge but a ton of fun for all us, especially this very large geek.

[ragboy]

Saturday Photo Highlights

So I have worked through all of the pictures from Saturday, and you can find them here:

https://facebook.com/wakesurfopen

I pulled out a few pictures that really stood out. The first is the one that made me sit back in my chair and pause and go "Whoah!". Ashley Kidd is a great wakesurfer but this picture threw me back. That is some amazing air.



That one picture made me want to post some highlights. So here are some more.

Great bottom turn by Ashley.



This is little Raleigh Hager and she rocks, as a father of four daughters I love how these girls will inspire new female surfers.



I know that both Maddie and Jessica have been inspired and Maddie especially from some personal attention by Ashley Kidd. Thanks Ashley.

I love it when Keenan throws air like this on his skim board, and with a grab, serious control and talent.



One of my favorite shots of Dom killing it.



Chase rode on a off the shelf Liquid Force quad because his new board is not done yet, and he still flew it.





James had a fever on Saturday and you could tell he wasn't in top form, but that didn't keep him from putting some serious sky under his beautiful stretch/flyboy board.



Keenan also entered the open men surf class flew his 2nd prototype board. He said he was still working on the fins and stuff, I can't wait to see it when its done. You can't see in these pics but the deck has a very pronounced double concave and he doesn't use anything by a rear tail pad and wax for traction. Looked very old school, I liked it.