Surfing with a 1998 Air Nautique

[CanadaNautiqueGuy]

I'm selling my 1998 Air and have been asked what's the surfing wake like. We've never really surfed, so I'd like to know how good / bad the surf wake would be with or without some more ballast. The boat has the OEM hard ballast tanks in the back. I don't want to mislead the guy, so I'd appreciate some input.

[wakemeup3460]

I'm selling my 1998 Air and have been asked what's the surfing wake like. We've never really surfed, so I'd like to know how good / bad the surf wake would be with or without some more ballast. The boat has the OEM hard ballast tanks in the back. I don't want to mislead the guy, so I'd appreciate some input.

I had a 99 Air Nautique that we tryed to surf with. I hate to say it, but that hull sucks for surfing. It has pretty much a flat bottom, low freeboard and not much draft compared to surf hulls. If I remember correctly, I had a fat sack in the rear locker on top of the hard tanks, fat sacks on the seats, around the engine compartment and in the ski locker. Probalby 2000 lbs of weight. We could never get enough push out of the wave to let go of the rope. Plus mobility in the boat was horrible with all the fat sacks. Having said that there has been some chatter on this board with surf setups on this boat that you may want to try and search for. Chexi did a lot of mods on his boat with ballast.

The size and quality of the wake for wakeboarding with the ballast was incredible though.

[zhadley]

We spent quite a bit of time over a week at powell trying to dial in the surf wave of a 98 Air. We actually got it pretty nice. Unfortunately, it took 4 sacs (around 2000lbs and about 6 people with some basically hanging off the tower and the rest crammed in the back on the surf side to produce a nice wave. A sheriff/patrol would not have been impressed. I would say that it can be done but definitely not easily.

[wakemeup3460]

That boat is basically a waterski boat. Its a direct drive. They added the factory ballast in the back and called it a wakeboard boat.

[Miljack]

The Sport hull is a ski hull @ heart, making a surf wake out of one is difficult. We had a Pro Air/TWC hull, and believe it or not, we could get a decent surf wake out of that hull.
To do so was a little scary and required a skilled driver to manage a LISTED boat...We could free ride, but it was a very small pocket close to the back of the boat, and the goofy side was way better than the regular side.
TWC hull was quite a bit different than the Air/Sport hull so our experience would be a little different, although both were DD layouts.

[CanadaNautiqueGuy]

Thanks for the feedback.