Wake Surfing after dark is dangerous on a hard bottomed lake like Powell and someone is going to get killed if it becomes the in thing to try!
Some topics have been discussed to death on these pages but I'm not sure Surf Boats are one of them yet. These comments may cross that line but it's a different perspective
With all the time I spend out on the lake I've got rude or clueless surf boat operator stories just like most of you do from just this past summer. There are probably only 10 such stories and only the names dates and times differ so I won't bore you with my versions, you've probably heard someone's version of them or experienced them for yourself already.
People who enjoy recreating with their families and friends by surfing are very passionate about it and the Wake Surfing Scene is something young people are crazy for; It's the new thing and it's probably here to stay.
This weekend I'm returning to Powell and hosting a friend of over thirty years on my houseboat. We met through a private water ski lake just outside Phoenix back in 1994. He seemed old at the time, my oldest friend, he was 36 and I was 26.
He always thought like a much younger person and still does. We were both very passionate about slalom skiing and used to get into small time tournaments in the local slalom ski scene. We both had weekend trailers out there on the lake and we used to laugh at ourselves around our winter fires at night (yes we'd ski in the winter there) over our obsession to just go around those little balls over and over again trying to better and improve our times but it was almost the only thing both of us wanted to do. It drove our wives a bit crazy.
He was telling me that he ran into one of the folks from back in the day who was involved in organizing tournaments at a national level and still is and that she was saying that soon the sport of slalom skiing will be dead; That water skis aren't selling anymore. She went onto say not enough (almost zero) young people are
interested in Slalom Sliing. She said that in her opinion within two years the Pro Tour events will be over, that almost no one is coming to watch the events. The pipeline of people coming up through the sport is almost empty and that water ski manufacturers are going out of business.
I've been out as a guest a few times out of the marina on Surf Boats with friends and their kids. I was invited and they were so excited about it and I wanted to check it out for myself and see what it was all about; I like to see young people doing something besides looking into plastic screens and for them to be really involved in something. I have a healthy dislike for surf wakes so it seemed strange to finally ride in one. It reminded me of Slalom Skiing in the way you just do the same thing over and over and in the way they are passionate about it with a few major differences.
With Slalom Skiing you needed very specific conditions like perfectly glassy flat water, a tiny soft frothy almost nonexistent wake and a slalom course. To get a tiny wake you need a tiny light weight boat and almost no one in it. The conditions had to be very specific and perfect for you to run your best times. It was a very quantitative time, speed distance kind of pursuit. It was a sport built for A type competitive folks who border on OCD. People could only watch from the shore and wait their turn.
With Surfing it seems much more social and communal. The boats are huge by comparison and the more weight in them, the more bodies in them the better. Everyone can participate and watch each other together and all you need is a Surfboat and a board. (or a friend who has one) The conditions of the water surface can be down right awful, once we went out in near white cap conditions right in the channel and the kids could still surf being protected from the chop by the wake. Those differences are some of the reasons I think it's caught on in such a big way.
My old slalom buddy and I were discussing my few outings and the Wake Surf Scene and he said that he could see why young guys like it. It's a sunny day on the lake and you're on a boat with a group of friends and you can all do it together and show off for your girlfriends but you can watch them too. He said he gets it and that if he was in his 20's again he'd like it too.
With the popularity of Wake Surfing and all the money involved from the outrageous prices the manufactures get for the boats these days I think Wake Surfing will endure. They will aggressively lobby against any and all restrictions or regulations through manufacturers associations the same way off road vehicle manufactures do.
However the damage Wake Surf Machines are doing to Lake Powell and the quiet enjoyment of others is real. The wake surf breaks on the shoreline and into other water craft like small ocean waves. They come pounding in on the beaches and erode them and as rollers on the lake they go on seemingly forever. I'll sometimes get caught in between two or three of them coming in from different directions and it rolls by runabout. For houseboats on the shoreline they can really give your boat a pounding even though they are the legal minimum 150 feet or more behind you. Last year I was beached and a guy thought he was being considerate I guess being 300 feet or so behind me but he just kept going back and forth behind me all day. He wasn't doing anything wrong and that's the point.
In my opinion we need some real regulations on Surf boating that are updated to today's realities. Government won't come out and enforce it but it would give me something to talk about with the operators. Im not above zipping out on my jet ski or in my runabout when my houseboat is beached to discuss their impact on me in a calm and rational way but when they aren't doing anything illegal all I'm doing is complaining. I hate to see what was once a beautiful lake where most people had respect most of the time for each other devolve into one upsmanship and acts of retribution. Regulations could help prevent that to a point by having an updated written standard.
Absence a written regulation I'm just an old guy telling them to get off my lawn