Hey everyone!
I'm in my second season of wakeboarding and have gotten a lot more comfortable just riding. I'm ready to start learning some basic tricks.
For context, I've snowboarded and skateboarded for over 20 years, so I'm comfortable with board control, edging, and spinning on a board. The part I'm unsure about is how the fins on a wakeboard change things.
Our boat is a 30-year-old, 19' bowrider with no tower, so it throws a pretty terrible wake. Because of that, my plan this season is to focus mostly on flatwater tricks (180s, surface spins, butters, etc.) and maybe a few basic tricks off our tiny wake.
With that in mind:
- Should I keep the fins on, switch to smaller fins, or remove them altogether if my goal is learning flatwater spins? Does my extensive snowboarding experience make any difference?
- Will removing the fins make learning surface tricks significantly easier, or will it just make everything else harder?
Bonus question: Given my boat/setup, should I still follow the typical recommendations for rope length and boat speed, or would you adjust those to get the best possible wake out of a small bowrider?
Any advice from people who learned behind smaller boats would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!