Surfing

Every year folks get dings in their wakesurf board.  The standard Polyester and Polyurethane boards are most suseptible to this, but all boards, if hit hard enough, can develop dings and holes. Even the FlyBoy Wakesurf Board in Composite Sandwich can get a hole punctured into it, even though it’s resitant to heel dents. If you slam into the transom or drop your board on the launch ramp, you’d best inspect it for damage.  If you have a small crack in the exterior in some fashion, that isn’t half way across the board, you can probably fix it on the lake.

DO NOT use duct tape!  I know, Duct Tape fixes everything, except a wakesurf baord.  Duct tape is a fabric and therefore not watertight and will let water into the crack, possibly causing greater damage. Further, the adhesive on Duct Tape, leaves a residue that must be cleaned off before attempting permanent repairs.

Also don’t use wax to seal the ding.  It isn’t realiable and again must be removed when going to repair the area permamnetly.

Out on the boat, the two best things to use to seal up a ding, so that you can continue to surf that day are a decal, or clear packaging tape.  We carry a rool of the clear packaging tape on the boat, but also a handful of the stickers that companies give away does the trick also.

For deep dings, use Marinetex, or any of a number of Epoxy Sticks available at your local hardware store.  You can also use a specialized ding repair kit available online or at most surf shops.  I would recommend you go with an epoxy based product, unless you 100% certain that your board is of polyester/polyurethane.  The reason being that the styrenes in a polyester based product will melt EPS foam in an epoxy board.

Always remove a shiny/glossy surface, before applying epoxy.  Also wait until the warmest part of the day has passed before applying epoxy.  As the day warms, the air inside the board warms, expanding in the process, and can negate your repair.   Wait for falling or steady temperatures, normally late in the afternoon, clean the area well, scrape away loose bits with a knife, rough things up a bit with sandpaper, or something sharp.  Smooth the repair with wet fingers and sand it, after cured, for the perfect finish.

Then get back out on the water!

Technorati Tags: flyboy wakesurf, flyboywakesurf, james walker, surfboard ding repair, wakesurf, wakesurf board, wakesurf boards, wakesurfer, wakesurfing

The surface 360 is the holy grail of wakesurfing tricks.  If you’ve reached the intermediate level as a wakesurfer you’ve most likely tried a surface 360 and most likely not hit it.  Commonly, folks can get the rotation, but float out the back.  Another common problem is over-rotating, like the board slides down the face and the board spins past 360 and you lose the wake.  The most common cause of this is a failure to site the boat after completing the rotation.

So much of the 360 is driven by the entry to the trick.  You want to enter the 360, with some speed, but too blazingly fast.  Just enough that you are gaining on the boat, but will be able to maintain control of the spin.  You can gauge this, by fading back from the spine about one board length.  Then, lean forward and bend your knees such that you are building speed, but also that your weight is pretty well centered over the board.  This is probably the most important part of the 360, and if you are finding that you are falling off backwards, you’re not leaning forward.  If you plow through the wake, you are too far forward.  Work on keeping the board flat for your rotation and maintain some speed forward.

The next phase is the turn up and into the wake which is combined with dragging your trailing hand in the wake.  This phase requires that you focus on trying to place the nose of your board at the very top of the spine.  You may have to work on this, but most often, where you place your hand in the wake face will be where the nose of the board will rotate.  Your hand becomes a pivot point and you should leave it in the water, using it to pivot around.  As the board starts up and around, you’ll pull your hand out and the board will rotate using the momentum you’ve created.  If you find the board not rotating around, try leaving your hand in the wake a touch longer.  If the board is over-rotating, try and pull your hand out sooner.  If you are having some difficulty rotating and you’re using a quad fin set up, remove the inboard fins. Typically it shouldn’t require that you size down with fins.  This is a common misconception, if the 360 is done correctly, the rotation will actually pop the fins out.

If you find yourself over-rotating and you’ve put shallower fins in, try swapping back to deeper fins.

The last phase is tough, because it’s not instinctual.  When you are up and around, you need to start looking for the boat.  Typically, you’ll be square to the board and that will cause your rotation to be slow and wide.  When you come around, look for the transom!  Make an effort to turn your head towards the boat and that will help you finish up the rotation.

So to recap, there are three components:

1) Set up, board flat, some speed
2) Turn up the wake and drag your trailing hand
3) As the board reaches about 180, turn your head over your shoulder and look for the boat.

These pictures of my dad, should show the three steps and then my dad, catching back up to the boat.

Technorati Tags: 360, flyboy wakesurf, wake surf, wakesurf, wakesurf board, wakesurf boards, wakesurfing

A composite sandwich is merely the joining of several different materials to form a structure. In a very real sense a typical surfboard is a sandwich comprised of foam and fiberglass, held together by polyester resin. One of the biggest problems with this type of construction is that it is not very durable. If you have ever owned a surf style wakesurf board manufactured this way you know that it gets heel dents almost after the first ride. Now, FlyBoy Wakesurf uses a composite sandwich with multiple density foam would be comprised of a low density EPS foam core, a layer of lightweight fiberglass, a layer of high density foam and then a final layer of heavier weight fiberglass all laminated with epoxy resin.

The higher density foam skin does a few things, it prevents most heel dents and dings. This foam is in the area of 5 pound density, which is considered structural, whereas most surf style wakesurf boards use a 2 to 3 pound density foam which tends to dent under pressure, such as when they are ridden. Also, as discussed below, it separates the fiberglass layers.

This composite sandwich also has more layers of fiberglass, which is what makes any surfboard strong. The most common lamination schedule is one layer of fiberglass on the bottom and two on the top. The composite sandwich will have, as a minimum, 2 layers top and bottom. This extra fiberglass gives the composite sandwich wakesurf board superior strength.

Without belaboring the math involved, the stiffness of any composite beam is determined by the distance between the facings. That is to say, in referring to a wakesurf board, the thicker said board is, the stiffer it will be. Also, the stiffness increase is exponential. Increasing by a factor of 1 increases stiffness by a factor of 4. In our wakesurf board the core of the board acts like the web of an I-beam and the fiberglass skin acts as the facings. The composite sandwich improves on this, by placing a high density foam skin between the two layers of fiberglass on the deck. On a normal surfstyle wakesurf board there is no distance between the two layers, and so by increasing the distance the stiffness is increased drastically, as well as improving strength and dent resistance.

Technorati Tags: epoxy, wakesurf, wakesurf board, wakesurfing