The tide is turning on water sports! According to a recent study, nearly 14% of the U.S. population over the age of six years old participates in some form of water sports. And almost 20% of all Millennials engage in water sports.
That is a lot of folks in the water in one form of sport or another! Swimming, snorkeling, paddleboating…all these are water sports. And then…there’s wakesurfing.
Wakesurfing. Wow, just the name itself is exciting! We all know how cool surfing is, and how athletically challenging it is and the high level of skill it requires…and then learning all those great wakeboarding tips, like why a bigger wake is better…but then adding the “wake” part to the term “surfing” makes the concept of this new water sport a lot more intriguing.
So what exactly is wakesurfing, then? Well, it is a water sport where the individual is on a board in the water, following the wake of a boat. Not just following, but riding the wake, completely untethered to the boat or anything else, after using a tow rope to get up and get going. Think of it as skateboarding on water, sort of, where the athlete is on a board.
This is slightly different from wakeboarding. In wakeboarding, however, the athlete is attached, and actually pulled along by a rope. How big is the board? Actually, the average wakeboard (smaller than a wakesurf board) is about five feet long (between 4.2-4.8 feet).
That’s not really very big, is it?! But it sure is popular. Just look at the stats: over 3.2 million people went wakeboarding in the U.S. in 2015. And the numbers keep growing!
The first U.S. design patent patent for a wakesurf was granted in 1997 to Alfonso Corona. Mr. Corona understood the physics of wakesurfing, and knew why a bigger wake is better. Today, we just know it is so much fun!
To sum up, one of the hottest trends in water sports is wakesurfing. So, if you haven’t tried it maybe it’s time to catch a wave and give wakesurfing a try. Then try to imagine what the next wave of popular water sport will be!
