Whats your Tige story

[Trenal]

I grew up on a crappy lake and with a crappy boat. In the late 60s my grandfather built a cabin on a lake here in Missouri. My mother, aunts and cousins would go about every weekend during the summer so there was always at least 10 people at the cabin. When I was growing up we had a bright orange Glassmaster with a 85 hp outboard. The boat eventually got destroyed by an unseen stump and the families never purchased another boat. Fast forward about 15 years and after hanging out with a friend on his 26ft Searay I decided I wanted to purchase a decently priced starter boat, so I could learn to be a boat owner. Went to the local Malibu dealer and was in luck as someone was trading in a used Tige the next week. He told me the specs and price and I put it on hold before I ever saw it. Bought a 1999 22i and currently keep it stored in dry dock storage so I don't have to mess with buying a dock or trailering it weekly.

[Matt Garcia]

I grew up on the beaches, surfing and fishing so I never had a boat growing up. It wasn’t until I bought a brand new Jet Ski in the summer of 1999. My first wake boat experience was a friends 1999 Tigé 21V riders edition. There was only a handful of wakeboard boats where I lived( Corpus Christi, TX) and this was one of them. I immediately wanted a wakeboard boat after I saw the light. After moving to Dallas I bought my first Tigé, a used 2001 23V Limited, this was in the summer of 2003. Shortly after buying this boat I saw the need for a site dedicated for Tigé owners. I came up with the concept in September 2003, pitched it to Tigé. They loved the idea and concept and this is where It all started. At the time I was working with Brett Thurley and Kip Davis, some of the original old school guys from Tigé. The site launched in January 2004. About a year later I sold my Tige since my wife and I were having out first child. Another year passed and decided to get in to another Tige. September 2007 is when I picked up my current Tigé, my 2007 RZ2. Anyway, that’s the short history of my Tigé experience and how TigéOwners originated.

[Bibbs]

We started using my parents 16 foot boat with a 85 HP outboard about 15 years ago. If you want to know how long you can drag a lake with a 200 pd guy trying to get up-I can provide that. Slalom skiing I would move the boat from side to side and hear the motor scream "fall off". So I convinced my wife to upgrade to a sea ray or similar boat. i also told her about something called wakesurfing. So we stopped by a boat dealership that had a blue water boat out front. It just happened to be a tige dealership. This is where we found out about different boats and we needed a v drive to surf. Here I thought there were boats with motors inside and outside. So I did some exploring and ended up getting a new 20v through my dealer via Florida. Just saw pics of boat and bought it. Huge learning curve but fun. Lots of help from this site. Well we sold the boat end of last year and were going to go a summer without a boat until we moved to our new place in Peachland bc. Then I found a good deal on a new 12 RZ2 in Cali. After numerous emails etc my wife and I bought it. Again only seeing pics. Pick it up in 6 weeks or so. Huge shout out to Grant at cal marine and Ragboy for answering all my emails and there opinions. That and pics when the trailer is built to follow in another post.

[dom w. forte]

I forgot I had a customer that had a 1992 comp 2000 that he bought brand new while living in Penn., from Charlie in Cal., he claimed to be the first Tige east of the Mississippi , he got a banner back then which he gave to me and is on one of my office walls, it has the Tige logo with the spray and has ( The next step in ski boat excellence ) in the corner of the banner is written 2 phone numbers in calf., it would be nice to see anybody post pictures of old literatures or promo stuff.

[murphini]

Never drove a boat until I was 40; I rented a 20' I/O at Lake Okoboji for 3 hours when our kids were 12 and 9 and it was the fastest 3 hours of my life. It was like watching money burn....

Next year I bought a 15 year old 20' VIP Victory I/O with 400 hours that had an OMC Cobra/Ford 302 v8 for $6000 thinking even if it sunk, would only be out 6k. Owned that boat for 4 summers as the kids became teenagers. Put a Monster wakeboard tower on it and kids loved wakeboarding. It was hard to keep at speed, was small, harsh, and when our daughter had her 13 year old birthday party on the boat with 6 of her 13 year old friends, my wife looked at me and said "we need a bigger boat". After putting 300 hrs on the VIP, I sold it for $6500. (of course I paid for bellows, maintenance, gear oil, wakeboard tower.... but I think it turned out to be a pretty good deal)

Demoed a 2007 24ve in the fall when our son was a sophomore in high school. The lack of nose rise may have sold us the boat...or it was the TigeSet cruise control, or the non-exposed prop, or the 16 person capacity....but I think it was when our demo guy said "I'm gonna make a uTurn"...and proceeded to execute a 25mph uTurn and we could feel the boat digging in and not listing....that is the instant I decided to buy it.

We're on our 6th summer of our 24ve, son graduates college this year, daughter will be a sophomore, but we have awesome teenage memories plus good times to come.

[IDBoating]

we have awesome teenage memories plus good times to come.

Reminds me of what we tell people when they see us filling 12+ gas cans at the gas station: "Gasoline is memories in liquid form."

[dom w. forte]

Get all the time you can on your boat while kids are in school and in college. Once they are out of household life tends to take them in other directions. Having a lake house extends it for a while and then they come back when they have children and want to take then boating. Once my daughters got married lake time was a lot lower on their priority lists for the weekends. My daughter who moved to Colorado would head down to Bullshoals, AK for the one week vacations we took there. A few years back we had Both sets of grandparents, some cousins, my sister and her significant other and my wife and 2 mid twenty daughters with two boats. One set of grand parents were not comfortable on ski boats so we rented a 24 foot pontoon and took a twenty mile cruise to the sandbar with two ski boats and the pontoon. The 5 labs, 1 mix breed and Shitzu's loved riding on the pontoon and the ski boats. Since we were only boats on sandbar we had a great time. We spent about 4 hours there with one or both ski boats towing skiers on the glass. Unfortunately it was last trip for my mom who loved going down there every year we could make it.

So true those memories are the best, we moved to a lake here in Fla. when our boys were 6 and 2 we were on the water every chance we had , all birthday partys and them after school , they would call me and ask if they could take the boat out, Id tell them you know what the rules are, an hour later my wife would call and ask did you tell them they could take the boat out, I said yes why , she said they had me come out and film them with there friends while they attempt to build a pyramid while skiing and they did it , hey it beats playing vidieo games.