Wakeboard and Wakeskate

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  • Topic: Wakeboarding, Wakeskating, Water sports
  • Pages : 10 (3071 words )
  • Download(s) : 149
  • Published : May 14, 2011
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Wakeboarding and Wakeskating

Juan Fermín Calderón


• Introductionpage3

• What is wakeboarding and wakeskating?page3

• History of wakeboarding page3

• Eventspage4

• History of wakeskatingpage4

• Forms and types of boardspage5

• How to get on a wakeboardpage5

• Development of wakeboarding boatspage6

• Boards brandspage6

• Top 5 hot spotspage6

• Anecdotes and my connection page7
to both of these sports

• Conclusionpage7

• Photospage7

• Bibliographypage8

Wakeboarding and wakeskating are water sports that require a board, a rope, a boat or a jet ski. The development of wakeboarding was influenced by many different sports but the most important ones are surfing and snowboarding. Why is wakeboarding growing so fast? Why are people so attracted to it? Is it because it involves doing it on water? There are some theories that man comes from the water and that may be a reason why people feel so relaxed and in peace when they are near a lake or the sea. That feeling when you just arrive at the lakeshore and you see the calmed water surface and an adrenalin rush goes through your entire body. All of us have the need to get in touch with nature and what would be better than a sport that you practice on water.

Wakeboarding is like water skiing, which is one of the best-known water sports; the wakeboarder is towed behind a boat at a speed of about 18 to 24mph. The difference between wakeboarding and water skiing is that, instead of skis, you ride with a single board with bindings (boots) similar to a snowboard but shorter and a little bit wider.

Like wakeboarding, wakeskating is also performed behind a boat and you ride at about the same speed of wakeboarding. The main difference between wakeboarding and wakeskating is that wakeskates have no bindings which means you are not bonded to the board and that makes it a little bit trickier to ride.

Most of the people who practice both of these sports are between the ages of 14 to 25 years, because they demand a lot of strength and stamina. All wakeboarders and wakeskaters are very easy-going; they see life from a more relaxed point of view, trying not to complicate it. They are very friendly and crazy too, because falling and hitting water with your face at a speed of 21mph is not a mellow caress.

Wakeboarding wasn’t created in one day; it took a lot of effort and influence from different people. Surfing was one of its major influences. Surfers were pulled by a jet ski or a boat in to waves that they weren’t capable of paddling in by themselves. A great surfer and wakeboarder named Tony Finn invented a board, the “skurf” in 1985 but people say that Tony Finn just produced these boards in mass; they say that the “skurf” was invented in New Zealand by Allan Byrne and his friend Kevin Jarret. Allan Byrne sent a skurf to his friend Jeff Darby in Queensland, Australia where they the started to make their own. After that, Jeff sent one skurf to Tony Finn and John Hamilton who were to later produce the brand “Skurfer Inc”. There are many different stories about the first skurf but this is certainly the most accurate one. Well, the inventors didn’t create the skurf from scratch; surfing influenced them, so the skurf had the shape of a small-sized surfboard with the same high buoyancy and its fins.

The skurf was very difficult to ride for some people because it had no straps and also because of it’s high buoyancy. Later in that decade an Australian surfboard shaper, Bruce McKee, got together with a big figure in the water skiing history, Herb O’Brien, who was also owner of H.O. Sports, Herb was inspired by another great sport, snowboarding, on the creation of bindings for the skurf board. He created these bindings when together with Bruce tried to get a snowboarder on a skurf....
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