(pictures are coming soon!)

This is my first post, so bear with me. I’m not much of a writer, but I can talk about wakeboarding all day, so I should be able to come up with something interesting.

Well let me start from the beginning, and how we got involved in boating in the first place…

The late 80′s Kawasaki Jet Skis:
A couple years ago, knowing absolutely nothing about boats or jetskis, but having alot of motorcycle experience, Ian (my twin bro and co-founder of Wakeboard SD) bought two old ~1987 Kawasaki 650sx stand ups.  These were an interesting experience. We got 2 well maintained old skis, and a nice Zieman trailer for ~$1200. They were pretty well maintained, and didn’t take much work to get up and running.  Keeping them running is another story! We ended up buying another ski for parts, and having to work on them for 2-3 hours any morning we wanted to use them just to ride for an hour and have them break down again.
Ended up selling them all and the trailer and making a couple hundred dollar profit.

The main effect these had was to hook us on watersports.

The mid 70′s ski boat:
Now hooked on jet skis, we figured it was time to get a boat.
Unfortunately, we got the wrong boat. We bought a $1900 “Craigslist Special”.
This 18′ mid 70′s Regatta fiberglass ski boat had a pretty ridiculous old 140HP Evinrude strapped to the back. The drain plug leaked, the boat leaked. The engine would only run full throttle for 1-2min before choking out.  We got a couple hot laps around the bay on this one, spent hundreds of dollars attempting to fix it, almost sank it multiple times, and drank a hell of a lot of beer on our expensive raft.
But, now we were hooked on boating!

The 94 Yamaha Waverunner:
Lesson learned from this one:
If a running $400 waverunner and trailer seems too good to be true, it probably is.
The thing made about 2 laps around the bay before breaking down and never starting again.
Electrical problems, shitty wiring, and all sorts of hidden rust made this thing a nightmare.
Sold for $300 profit!

The  2007 Maxum 1800 SR3:
Finally, a good purchase. We bought a 2007 Maxum 1800 SR3 from Hipp Marine.
Brand new. Got hooked up with a wakeboard tower from DBG Concepts, learned to wakeboard, had a blast, and the rest is history. Awesome boat, tons of options, super nice and in excellent condition.

However, now we’re completely hooked on wakeboarding. We’re now selling the Maxum, and going to be moving up to a wakeboard specific boat, (Although the Maxum kicks out a pretty killer wake with the Hi-5 prop and skylon sacks!).

So thats our quick history of boating mistakes and experience.
The Maxum is up for sale (Shoot me an email if you’re interested!),
and we’re looking at new boats.

My next article will be on the boats we’re looking at…pros & cons.

Thanks for sticking with me as I figure out how the hell to write interesting articles.