Do you want to wakeboard? Great, connect the fifty thousand dollar boat to the F-350, fill the gas tanks, drop it in the lake and go split it up. There is nothing like the feeling of laying the edge of the board and spraying dew on the lake. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to a good boat, or the time to take care of everything else related to organizing a great wakeboarding session. Fortunately, there is a revolution underway that is making wakeboarding accessible to everyone. Now there are three new ways to travel without the use of a boat. Cable parks, winches, and kites have not only made wakeboarding cheaper, but they have also opened up all kinds of new water terrains for people to get around.

Cable parks came first. Using technology borrowed from ski lifts, cable parks use a rope trailer 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 or style levels. Artificial lakes are designed to maintain the perfect depth and are great for setting up obstacles like sliders and kickers for riders to challenge their skills. Cable parks are also a great place to host wakeboarding contests, and many professional riders spend most of their time honing 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 $ 1500, a winch can be installed in all kinds of places, from small ponds, between piers, along canals and even streams. , rivers and on the ocean beach! Winches give riders a straight line ride of roughly five to six hundred feet and sometimes more. Many wakeboarders use winches to pull them through railway parks or through a single water source, as they are limited to one run at a time and in a more or less straight line. Winches simply require one friend to operate them while the other rides, a few gallons of gas for an entire day, and can be easily transported from place to place.

Kites are possibly the coolest and most amazing new source of attraction for wakeboarders. Kitesurfing has 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 utmost freedom to navigate completely on their own, in any direction. where you want to go. and through all kinds of water, from choppy lakes to butter-smooth glass, ocean waves to waters a few inches deep that they would never be able to access when swept away 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 for as long as you want, at least until the wind dies down. Kitesurfing kites pack into the size of a rear back when not in use, weigh only a few pounds total, can be set up, launched and landed without assistance, and once in the air are capable of pushing passengers into almost anywhere. direction, even up. High-performance kites pull as hard as a wakeboard boat, they are steered by the rider to pull left or right, or upward, 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 traction on the kite while sailing. If the kite crashes in the water, nothing happens, they are designed to relaunch, and many of them do it very easily. Although slightly more complicated than other types of wakeboarding where riders simply hold on and sail, kiteboarders have to ride and ride at the same time, the freedom and rewards of wakeboarding behind the kite are unmatched in the sport. . Although everything you need to set up a kite generally costs around $ 3,000, once you have the equipment, there are no other expenses, no gasoline, no maintenance or service, and no one else is required to drive or operate the equipment. .

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