Do you want to wakeboard? Great, hook up the fifty thousand dollar boat to the F-350, fill up the gas tanks, drop it in the lake and go break it up. There’s nothing like the feeling of putting the edge of your board down and throwing spray onto the lake. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to a good boat, or the time to take care of everything else involved in putting together a great wakeboarding session. Fortunately, there is a revolution underway that is making wakeboarding accessible to everyone. There are now three new ways to travel without the use of a boat. Cable parks, winches, and kites have not only made wakeboarding cheaper, they’ve also opened up all kinds of new water terrain for people to ride.

Cable parks came first. Using technology borrowed from ski resort chairlifts, cable parks use a rope tow that travels in a large circle around man-made lakes. For fifty dollars or so, wakeboarders can purchase a pass, grab the rope as it goes, and be towed across the lake. Cable parks are opening across the country, many with multiple lakes for riders of varying skill levels or styles. The man-made lakes are designed to maintain the perfect depth and are great for placing obstacles like sliders and kickers for riders to challenge their skills. Cable parks are also a great place to host wakeboarding contests, and many pro riders spend most of their time perfecting their cable riding skills.

Winches are another great solution for getting out on the water and riding. About the size of a suitcase, and available for much less than the cost of a boat, around $1,500, a winch can be installed in all sorts of places, from small ponds, between docks, along canals, and even streams. , rivers and on the ocean beach! Winches give riders a straight line of travel of approximately five hundred to six hundred feet and sometimes more. Many wakeboarders use winches to pull them through rail parks or through a single water source, as they are limited to doing one run at a time and in a more or less straight line. Winches simply require one friend to operate while the other rides, a few gallons of gas for a whole day, and can be easily transported from one location to another.

Kites are possibly the coolest and most amazing new source of attraction for wakeboarders. Kiteboarding has only recently become a giant water sport in its own right in recent years, and for many wakeboarders, being pulled by the kite offers them the ultimate freedom to navigate completely under their own power, whichever direction they go. they want to go. and through all kinds of water, from choppy lakes to butter-smooth glass, ocean waves to water a few inches deep that they would never be able to access when pulled by a boat. The best part for many riders is that there are no turns when riding behind a kite, and you can stay out and ride as long as you like, at least until the wind dies down. Kitesurf kites pack down to the size of a back pack when not in use, weigh only a few pounds total, can be set up, launched and landed unassisted, and once airborne are capable of dragging passengers on almost anywhere. direction, even upwards. High performance kites pull as hard as a wakeboard boat, they are directed by the rider to pull left or right, or straight up, allowing wakeboarders to soar 40 feet into the air or more. The rider can also control the amount of wind the kite catches, to create more or less pull on the kite as it rides. If the kite crashes into the water nothing happens, they are designed to relaunch, and many of them do so very easily. Although slightly more involved than other types of wakeboarding where riders simply strap on and ride, kiteboarders have to ride and steer at the same time, the freedom and rewards of wakeboarding behind the kite are unmatched in this sport. . Although setting up a kite with everything you need usually costs around $3000, once you have the kit there are no other expenses, no gas, no maintenance or service, and no one else is required to drive or operate the kit. .

Anyway, wakeboarding is a lot of fun and one way or another it is now available to the public and not just the kids whose parents have the house on the lake and the boat that costs as much as a college education.