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View Full Version : Looking for Suggestions - unable to go "ropeless" (wireless)



HyperCVAD198
08-23-2013, 02:11 AM
Hey all,

Got a 2011 Sunsport 22V, and been trying to wake surf behind it this summer. We're getting up without a problem, and pulling nicely into the flats, but notice that we can't quite seem to get off the rope. We seem to be able to get good slack in the rope, but no real "push" to be able to drop the rope and stay off completely. Don't get me wrong, we're having ALOT of fun trying - but it would be nice to be able to ride the wave entirely this year, and cruise along for awhile. We've mastered the "don't be heavy on the back foot" and noticed we're getting more aggressive with the front foot down - which helps tremendously. Every time we try to come off the rope though, it seems that we end up washing out the back.

We're riding a smaller board (Liquid Force 4'10 Custom - 20.4" wide) which I think is somewhat playing into the reason we can't go without rope. We've noted that we have a more "advanced" board - one which is tougher for beginners and more of a shredding/skim type board - or so it seems. Story there is that I got a good deal on craigslist and figured it would be a decent way to try the sport fairly cheaply.

We're also only running stock ballast bags. I believe the ballast configuration is as follows:

Center Ski Locker: 650 lbs (*may only be 550 - trying to remember specs)
Back Left Locker: 400 lbs
Back Right Locker: 400 lbs

Usually I have the boat configured in the following manner:

Center: 100% (full) - heard more weight up front will give a longer "pocket"
Back Left: 100% (surfside) - the only side we surf on
Back Right: 50% (to add some weight to the back end)
WakePlate: 10-20% - depending on how we can get it dialed in
Speed: 10.5 MPH

The number of people we have on the boat varies from 4 to 12 - but one time we had the above config PLUS 8 people on the back left corner. (+1 driver)(all 8 seated - everyone snuggled up nice and close). The wave looked HUGE compared to normal, and we were rocking the gangster lean - but it was a choppy day - so tough to get a good read on how that worked. We've played with wake plate settings, with speed, and a bit with the ballast - but the above config seems to put us as close as possible to going ropeless.

I have two "purchase now" options - both should be implemented before Summer 2014, but I wanted to see which one the forums thought would have the most impact IMMEDIATELY: (we would love to conquer rope-less before this summer finally breaks for good)

1. New Board - We've been researching various boards, and note that our board is MUCH narrower than most of the normal surf style boards - so we've considered a HyperLite Broadcast (5'6) as well as a Hyperlite LandLock (5'10) as good beginner boards. Some CWB boards are also in the mix as well. We're not sure we wanna go with the $500+ (Inland Surfer) boards that everyone seems to LOVE - until we can get some people off-rope first. We note that the Landlock may be too much chill and not enough fun as we progress - but we also have some bigger friends 250+ and less aggressive friends who won't wanna shred on the skim-type boards and will just enjoy getting up and cruising. Right now, we figure the cost is at least 25-33% lower than normal on some of these boards at end of year- so it may be worth it to pick one up @ $200 - $300.

2. Add a 1100lbs FlyHigh sack to the back left - and take the 400lbs for somewhere else on boat. (front/left back seats) I've been thinking long and hard about this option as well. $200 bucks and 15 min install guarantees us a big wake surf-side, even if we're light on people. Loaded down- we become a wave making MACHINE. I like that idea - and obviously the extra weight will come in handy next year as well. However, if we're on the wrong board, it's possible that no matter WHAT amount of ballast I have, I may have a tough time getting to go without rope.

So, as you can see - I'm torn. Each option has benefits that are likely to help the cause, but I'm not sure which is best to go for at this point in time- so I am looking to my fellow Supra owners to help with suggestions. All thoughts and suggestions are welcome. Will provide some pics of the wake shortly.

HyperCVAD198

Scottysspeedshop
08-23-2013, 10:02 AM
We have a 24 SSV I have 750 fat sacs in the back we fill only the side we will be surfing on and fill the front sac full 1100# I think and the wake plate at 0 . The board we use is a inland surf Red rocket . We have no problem getting off the rope with this set up this includes my self
280 # intermediate surfer my daughter 100# beginner and my son 170 # intermediate.

wax
08-23-2013, 03:50 PM
You should absolutely upgrade to the 1100lb, at least for the side you surf on mostly. It's the best $200 you'll spend. If most of you and your crew are regular, then get a 1100 for the left and leave the 400 on the right. You don't need more than 400 on each side for wakeboarding really, and the goofy side will make an easier wake than the left due to LH prop rotation so if you have any goofy riders I bet the wake will be fine on the right for them with just the 400. I have 1100 on left and 650 on right, and the surf wake on the right with the 650 is about as good as the left with 1100.

As for boards, I highly suggest a CWB Ride. It's relatively inexpensive and they've been around for a long time pretty much unchanged, so there's a good chance you can find one used on forums or craigslist. It is a GREAT board for beginners/intermediates and is very fast and buoyant; it's even a decent board once you become more advanced. I bought it as my first board 7 years ago, and I still ride it (although my skills are surpassing it now, so a new higher level board is on the horizon for me shortly). It's great for all sizes and ablility of riders. I'm 220 and I surf it easily, and I even take my 4 year old with me on it sometimes.

Those two things may be able to be done for about $400 total if you find a used board, and I'm sure they will greatly improve your surfing experience. However, there's still technique involved also...

jaywidhalm
08-23-2013, 08:16 PM
Plus, if you upgrade your 400 lb bag I will buy your old one from you and help offset some of the cost! ;)

trayson
08-23-2013, 08:29 PM
If you go over to wake9 there is a great vid about going ropeless. The "superman" technique helps a lot. I have a sunsport direct drive and put 250 inder the rear seat and 1100 olong the surfside with zero in the bow. On my liquid force fish 5'6 I can surf for the length of a whole song...
I will admit that it takes a little more balance to do the same with my 4'9 broascast, but I certainly can freeride with either.
Are you all standing on the board with emphasis to the toe edge?

Maybe try zero on the non surf side???

Where is your water level when underway? Mine has water at the rubrail all the way to the rear cleat.

trayson
08-23-2013, 08:34 PM
also look for Deals. I found my 4'9 broadcast with a rope for $75 on CL.

And see if u can find someone on the forums in your area with an easier board you can demo. I can surf for days on my liquid force fish 5'6.

Lastly call the guys at wakemakers.com they are wizards and will be able to help you out. One call to them resulted in a reconfigure for me that took my surf wave to winning status for a DD.

CornRickey
08-24-2013, 10:27 AM
save your money on bags and buy quick fill caps for one bag. Fill your surf side in the compartment. take your other side, put the connectors on it and put it on the floor on tbe surf side. leave the front empty and build some simple surf gates. that will be plenty weight and you won't have the crazy lean and you will have money for beer. my friend just made one out of three cutting boards and 45 minutes that is reversible from one side to the other. It pissed me of because I took two week and about 200.

OneCent
08-24-2013, 07:13 PM
Change your Board ;-).

We changed our board to a longer Ronix, and had no problems anymore with "ropeless".

2500HD
08-25-2013, 10:11 AM
I'm 200 pounds and can go ropeless with much less weight than 1500#'s. I'm riding a cwb ride that is 5'-0.
One of your problems could just be your stance on the board. I like to ride with my back foot straight across the board and my front foot angled to the front at 45 degrees. I keep a weight forward stance and keep my weight on my toes. This keeps the board planted into the wave. Hope some of this helps. Good luck.

HyperCVAD198
08-27-2013, 08:06 PM
All awesome suggestions guys - thanks for the info!

While out this past weekend, I did start to play with the speed - noted that as we got up to 12.5 we were seeming to have luck going "off rope" for a handful of seconds. (For some reason, I previously kept sticking to 10.5 when I'm sure I remember seeing people say that faster or slower speeds can also make a difference -blame it on info overload). So, that, plus a further emphasis on the toes (standing facing a slight uphill, heels slightly off the ground) seemed to give us more success. We were stoked for that development. So that combined with the realization that a busy fall convinced me that we can stay with the current configuration to end out the season. We should be able to get off the rope, just going to need to put in some more hours.

Of course, over the winter, we will be adding board and ballast to get next summer kicked off even bigger.

Thanks for the suggestions/tips!

Moor
08-28-2013, 12:50 PM
If you go over to wake9 there is a great vid about going ropeless. The "superman" technique helps a lot. I have a sunsport direct drive and put 250 inder the rear seat and 1100 olong the surfside with zero in the bow. On my liquid force fish 5'6 I can surf for the length of a whole song...
I will admit that it takes a little more balance to do the same with my 4'9 broascast, but I certainly can freeride with either.
Are you all standing on the board with emphasis to the toe edge?

Maybe try zero on the non surf side???

Where is your water level when underway? Mine has water at the rubrail all the way to the rear cleat.


Trayson, your not running ANY ballast up front? Do you have a pic of your surf wake? On my 1988 Sunsport im running 500 in the ski locker, about 600 across the floor between rear seats and the dog house, 500 in the bow, and sometimes another 500 along the side (depending how many passengers are on board). Id love to run less weight, but i cant get a nice wave without front ballast. I'm riding the same 5'6 liquid fish as you, and also a 5'0 obrien alias. I'm almost 200lbs, so maybe i need all that wight to push my fat *ss around lol

trayson
08-28-2013, 02:01 PM
Trayson, your not running ANY ballast up front? Do you have a pic of your surf wake? On my 1988 Sunsport im running 500 in the ski locker, about 600 across the floor between rear seats and the dog house, 500 in the bow, and sometimes another 500 along the side (depending how many passengers are on board). Id love to run less weight, but i cant get a nice wave without front ballast. I'm riding the same 5'6 liquid fish as you, and also a 5'0 obrien alias. I'm almost 200lbs, so maybe i need all that wight to push my fat *ss around lol

I run typically with:

370 tube sack on the surfside floor next to the doghouse
750 fat sack on top of it, with as much of it in the rear seat as possible
~250 tube sack under the rear seat across the back.
spotter in the center/rear or on top of the fat sacks.



In the following pics, I had the above setup with about 200 pounds of kids in the observer seat. the spotter was 150 and driver was 130.

I am 5'10 and 170.

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-1ltWQCn9CK8/UhJ_9qFHANI/AAAAAAAAOzo/G5iOcLQdQVA/s800/WP_20130817_023.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-6s9gTZBxVvk/UhJ_9risM5I/AAAAAAAAOzw/ztH-qyV8uSk/s800/WP_20130817_021.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-PgG7X0Lu2fY/UhJ_9uZriPI/AAAAAAAAOzs/_BY_vXNEiZA/s800/WP_20130817_020.jpg

Here is a video that goes with the above pics:
http://youtu.be/ozrMElT46CY

When I was running with only 1 adult and my son, I changed it up and put a small 150 pound sack on the middle rear seat. I made my 50 pound son lean against the doghouse and flag from middle/rear.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ej3pUaJ5XHo/UhIv2zNPFXI/AAAAAAAAOyA/0UFn-yKXIjY/s800/20130816_111151.jpg

Smooth water helps. And the wake breaks and gets foamy if we run in water under 10 feet. With the above setups, I'm running water just over the rub rail all the way up to the first cleat when underway.

Here is a video where I think I still had the 150 in the cooler, but I had extra people to offset it...
http://contour.com/stories/supra-sunsport-doing-surf-duty

last night we were running with

370 tube sack on the surfside floor next to the doghouse
750 fat sack on top of it, with as much of it in the rear seat as possible
~250 tube sack under the rear seat across the back.

and the wife's back wasn't feeling good so she sat on top of the fat sack and my buddy who is 235 was driving, but would stand as far center on the boat as possible when driving (we have perfect pass, so throttle control isn't necessary once we're underway).

With the same setup as above, and me driving and my 235 pound buddy on the Fish, he was able to get some decent freerides. He has to work it a bit more and my skill level is higher, so I'm honestly not sure how much of his increased effort is due to his 65 extra pounds vs. my increased skill/experience.

There was another time when we were out and we had driver, adult in observer seat and the 3 sacks as normal. When we had ~200 pounds of kids shift to the bow, it KILLED my wake. So we've been just running with no bow weight (small anchor, toolbox, deflated tube, life jackets) and our small cooler with some beverages and a bag with some dry snacks and towels in the "cooler" storage compartment in the open bow walkthrough.

Oh, and I don't have a center ski locker (not sure if you were talking about a rear trunk or a center floor type locker). I have the rear trunk, and that's filled with wake ropes, life jackets, wetsuits, etc.

trayson
08-28-2013, 02:07 PM
While we always have the bag under the rear seat filled, the MAGIC happened to our wake when we double stacked the bags on the surf side. We used to run the 750 on the floor on the surf side next to the doghouse and the 370 on the floor between the rear seat and engine (across back). That was 'okay' but no where near as good as the current setup.

This is how it used to look:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-ANnEtafKgug/UbUX6Pv0klI/AAAAAAAAOE8/nJhgVV97ysc/s800/%255BUNSET%255D.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-KDTG23eg4I0/UbUFMLOf9xI/AAAAAAAAOEs/I6dxdTohbV0/s800/%255BUNSET%255D.jpg

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QtmgS-9a3jk/UbUFJn2r6CI/AAAAAAAAOEk/PQM43nGR8jI/s800/%255BUNSET%255D.jpg

But honestly the current setup of double stacked bags on the surf side is way better and not running the front bag has been awesome since the wife is WAY happier being able to put food/beverage/towels into that cooler storage compartment.

Moor
08-28-2013, 04:55 PM
Thats a pretty nice surf wave Trayson. I never thought about stacking the bags on the surf side, interesting. The only time i ran with no weight in the front was when we were still learning to drop the rope. i had to add weight in the front because our sweet spot was so small we were having a lot of trouble staying in it, so we fattened it up with 500 under the front seats on the surf side, and we were surfing ropeless. I'm definately going to try your currect weight placement when i get home. Where are you running your wake plate? up down or in the middle?

trayson
08-28-2013, 05:05 PM
I believe it's all the way up. I've never messed with it.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ZO1CE_KcDJQ/UhpFmVjkgqI/AAAAAAAAO1Q/glcszMx0WIY/s800/20130825_103341.jpg

Of course we porpoise quite a lot when surfing (you can see in the one video of the boat)

kvand347
08-28-2013, 07:49 PM
As Trayson said..stack your bags as close to the back and on the side your want to surf for the best wave. No need for extra front ballast. Use people if you have a lot on board.

trayson
08-29-2013, 12:48 AM
As Trayson said..stack your bags as close to the back and on the side your want to surf for the best wave. No need for extra front ballast. Use people if you have a lot on board.

Yep, a pic from tonight...

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-lvavHAYiw0Q/Uh7RMxYivYI/AAAAAAAAO3o/gBYZ1p_5wEY/s800/20130828_190043.jpg

Picture of how slammed the boat was at rest... (look at the "SUPRA" letters in my sig pic, and then compare to what you can see of them in this:
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-z0NufdGQTYE/Uh7RL7aQajI/AAAAAAAAO3g/FRfaZtY_GL8/s800/20130828_190105.jpg

And here's my buddy freeriding... all 235 pounds of him. I was driving and my wife and he son were at the stern. no bow weight... Yeah, he's REALLY forward on the board, but he's riding it. FWIW my (im)Perfect Pass wasn't being very cooperative. It was having a tough time keeping a stable speed for us despite the SMOOOOOOOOOTH water.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-aWmXIN1UghE/Uh7SYsT0NAI/AAAAAAAAO34/C0Uewh5evmE/s800/20130828_195045.jpg

MJHKnox
09-04-2013, 09:40 PM
I have the 2007 SSV 22'.

I wanted to try to stay away from bags outside of the compartments.

Got rid of the 400# and went with 750# bags. Could also go with #1100 if you wanted - Not sure the 1100s will fill all the way.
New pumps help fill the bags quicker. More $$, but DID NOT REGRET THIS.
Move people all on one side.
Wake Plate up.

Try the longer board, >5'. The LF Fish or CWB Ride are good options that will not break the bank.
If you want to spend $$ on a board, buy and Inland Surfer Red Rocket. Will float 'big boys', but will also cost >$500.

Everyone is dropping the rope. Staying in the pocket is another thing. That requires some skill for the people that do not have it to start with.

Mark

HyperCVAD198
11-10-2013, 01:56 PM
Extremely Late Update:

Wanted to thank everyone for their suggestions. We did end up biting on a new board (a Hyperlite LandLock 5'10) right before a long Labor Day weekend at a cabin. (Side Note: It was REALLY nice to be able to walk down and fire up without having to drop off the trailer, etc. ) The difference between the 4'10 and the 5'10 was night and day. We were getting the "push" that we expected rather than having to fight the entire time to stay in pocket. Thinking back, it's amazing how we were able to get all those people up on the shorter board, because the new board makes the process so much easier. We're well aware that there's not much shredding to be had on the longer board - but that's just fine for the ladies of the group (who were all able to get up on the weekend - and one has even gone ropeless/wireless for minutes at a time!)

Key factors (we felt) to our success:
1. Longer Board - easier up and more "push".
2. Speed - as we started keeping the speed between 11.5 and 12.5 mph and noticed it was also making it easier to stay wireless as well.

We'll still be looking to do some ballast upgrades, but think that we're at the point where we can comfortably spend a season enjoying everyone getting up regularly and starting to advance our techniques. (we were goofing around on the shortboard while on rope with 180s, etc).

Thanks again,all!