I can’t believe summer is just around the corner, but boy am I ready! We had such a mild winter, yet I’m ready for the sun to come out and stay out once and for all! I love playing outdoors with my boys. One of our favorite summer activities is swimming. Our boys are like little fish in the water. They love it! We have been browsing the net looking for swim trunks and all of the other fun stuff we will need as we hit the water this summer. Recently we came across a few websites full of interesting watersports. My boys got all excited when they saw one of the fastest growing watersports in the United States, wakeboarding!
What is wakeboarding? (It’s ok, I had to read about it because I had no clue when we first came across it!)
In the mid 1980s a Sand Diego surfer named Tony Finn created and began marketing a new device called a Skurfer, which was hybrid water-ski surfboard. The Skurfer allowed the rider to perform surf-style carving moves on the wake while being pulled by a boat. The Skurfer had no straps or bindings and looked a lot like a small surfboard. In the summer of 1985 he added straps to the Skurfer. About this same time, a Texan named Jimmy Redmon added straps to his Redline design water-ski board, which is a popular alternative to the Skurfer. When they introduced foot-straps, that is when wakeboarding was born! The foot-straps allowed the rider to catch big air, which changed the riding style into something that looked more like snowboarding than surfing.
The boards were still a little difficult to maneuver and the sport didn’t seem to be very popular among a lot of people, that is until businessman, Herb O’Brien invented the Hyperlite, which was the first compression-molded neutral-buoyancy wakeboards. This new board made deepwater starts much easier, opening the sport to just about anyone, from kids to older people!
Now isn’t that interesting?
What is your favorite sport?
What is your favorite summer activity?
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