When did wake surfing start to take off?

[IDBoating]

I know people have played around with surfing behind a boat for decades, but when did "wake surfing" start becoming a "thing"? Personally, we first surfed behind a friend's boat around 2008-2009. Fly High started making fat sacs around 2000, I believe, but those may have been more focused toward wakeboarding in the early days. I know Centurion came out with one of the earliest surf-oriented boats but I don't know when that happened. And I don't know when companies like Inland Surfer started making shorter, wakesurf specific boards.

Anyone know the history?

[ericinmich]

A Tige friend got his boat in Northern Michigan in 1999, a 2100v I think, no dealers around but had it shipped directly from the plant. He was/is an early adopter in everything (started making snowboards in about 1985 in college), and surfing must of been going on somewhere. We would get as many fat friends as possible and surf all day. He still has the boat, going strong, uses sacs now vs fat friends.

[TeamAllen]

We bought our first "Wake Surfboard" May 2007.
We had ridden others before that in the summer before, so 2006 ish? We ha dudes can surfboards behind our old I/O but never behind our Tigé

[lee]

We were using Fat Sacs in the '90's and surfing around 2002.

[Wakeman22]

Early 2000's people started listing boats heavy and started the surfing craze. It has seen exponential growth since.

[chpthril]

2010 when it went mainstream

[IDBoating]

2010 when it went mainstream

OK, but when did inboard manufacturers start mentioning it in literature, and tailoring their boats to put some emphasis on it? I remember lots of talk about how Tige more or less "got lucky" that their ConvexV hull worked so well for surfing, and I think I remember them leveraging off that happy accident in their literature back when we were buying our 2009 24Ve. That doesn't mean it was "mainstream" yet, but weren't boat manufacturers starting to chase that segment before 2010?

[chpthril]

Search out centurion switch blade and master craft gen 1 surf tab. Surf gate was next. Centurion I think was the first with a surf specific hull all the rest just made their hull surf better with a device.

[Thegerman618]

Mike is correct, I owned a centurion long ago and they had this big claim to fame that in the early 90's they made a "Surf" boat. From what I remember it was Direct Drive with a Deep V, a 250lbs hard tank in the rear, and an extended ski pylon. I believe the dropped the "Ski" Centurion and called it the Centurion "S" for surf. That is what I remember from the old Centurion website when they had the whole history of Centurion and Fineline. They have updated their webpage since I was there last and removed the history piece.

[Thegerman618]

I first heard of surfing mid season 2010 but by then it was already pretty well know. Ronix/HL/LF were already making wakesurf specific boards, Flyhigh was already making 1000lbs+ Bags, bigger pitch propellers were coming out for big weight, and I even remember seeing in on the Summer X-Games Wakeboard Jam. There was a break in between heats and the showed some people wakesurfing. It wasn't being judged, probably just some wakeboarders messing around but it was the first time I had seen it in 08/09.

[h2osk8er00]

I can remember when I first started looking into it and that was then I bought my boat in early 2009...It was definitely around way before then obviously. Fatsac was one of the first ballast companies I can remember coupled with Ski Pylon or Ski Boom or something like that which was the tower equivalent circa 1995 or maybe slightly before... I will never forget how people would tell me to load my boat with bricks or weights... I was always like "you're crazy" and now look at us.. adding automated ballast and 50 lb bags of steel wherever we can afford it. Def fun to think about where it came from and how it has evolved. 10 years from now they may be able to generate surfable waves using different boating technology..... I'm sure if you researched all the models of boats you could find when they realized an outta the box surf boat was the way to go... People have been surfing regular surfboards behind boats since the 60s from what I could find.. but the actual Wake Surf style board was patented until 1997 according to wikipedia... I would think that boats around that time were beginning to anticipate the need for surfable waves but I am interested to see what people claim as the first surf boat. I have hear that too that Tige had gotten lucky with their design and I def love my little wave behind my old bird (2001 2100V Limited)...Good thread and look forward to some of the older head chiming in to tell us more.

[kbboehm]

From what I remember it was started in the gulf states for guys that used to surf the west coast and couldn't find waves. They did it on the oil tanker wakes being pulled out by PWC's. Big wave for days.


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