Help for WakeSurf beginners

[EricU]

So... we are new to wake surfing, been wakeboarding for years and had dinosaurs pulling us on slaloms before that.

Anyway, we have an older ('08) RZ4 that we just finished rewiring as when I had the five reversibles on the stock helm's distro block, and blew a fuse in the first five minutes and well let's just say THAT didn't work.

So last time out we ended up with no ballast, but we tried surfing anyway (after boarding) at our new favorite Lake Oroville here in Northern California.

With no ballast we were all able to get up on our Ronix Koal Fish board but only one of the lightest kid (definitely not me!) could let go of the rope. He ways about 130lbs. I am about 80lbs heavier and could not come close to being able to let go of the rope.

Since none of us have any experience,

• What should (or should not) we be doing or looking for surfing?

This may sound like a stupid question, but last year we were trying to surf on a wakeskate at 70' off and at around wakeboarding speeds!! Yep! didn't work for surfing!

We all ride goofy footed

1. I am going to start with the driver's (starboard) side rear bag full, the port locker at ~50% full and the two front bags full? Does this sound correct?
2. Is the boat speed 10 to 12 mph? set by just the shape of the wake? or...?
3. The board has three fins, at first we didn't install any fins, but did install the single center fin for one of the kids that couldn't keep the board straight without it. What, when and why are the fins for?

Thanks for any help, and if you are in the neighborhood, feel free to stop and laugh at the big ol red RZ4 at Lake Oroville with all the greenhorns on it!

[jbort]

Don't recall seeing the RZ4 setup off hand but visit wake9.com for lots of info. I think Ragboy (Robert Garcia) is also in that area and u should definitely look him up; he is among worlds elite and informative authority on Tige boats for wake surfing. he takes folks out all the time too.

[EricU]

...but visit wake9.com for lots of info...

Oh, I have seen his site and his kids in those videos are quite impressive.

[robert theisen]

We took a friends 2006 24V out this weekend.He didn't have any ballast.So we got 10 people to pile in on the port side,2 on the back pad.It made a surf able wave at 11 mph although it wasn't that long.Then everyone got on the starboard side and i surfed too. The wave had good push but wasn't very long.We weight our RZ2 similar to your above setup,except we only fill under floor ballast 250 lbs. on port side.We set the TAPS at 3 and go 11.6 mph. The wave has plenty of push even 15 foot back from the deck.