Guide to Driving a Boat While Pulling a Rider
Monster Tower and Freedom Wake Park have teamed up to show you how to drive a boat while towing a wakeboarder. In this video you will find out how to hold your arm, what to do when the rider falls, and tips for controlling your boat. Towing a rider takes a certain finesse, so learn how to safely and effectively pull wakeboarders!
Video Transcript
Hi, I am Cobe Mikacich out here at Freedom Wake Park. Our friends over at Monster Tower have asked us to show you guys how to drive a boat while pulling a rider.
So, while you're driving the boat when I operate the throttle I like to have my elbow rested firmly on the arm rests and then I like to use my fingers and my thumb to hold the throttle, so I can be really smooth and subtle with my movements, no aggressive jerks with the throttle will make the rider's experience a lot better.
A couple of really key things while you’re driving the boat is to make sure that your boat is level when it's at planing speed. So, you want to make sure that the boat is level the wake is even, if one side has white wash, you need to move a little bit of weight towards that side to clean up the wake and make it nice and even on both sides. The other thing is to make sure that you are driving a straight line, you can use something on shore to aim at as a reference, but you can also tell by your boat pattern, see if you’re arching it or making little turns. You want to keep a nice straight line that'll make it nice and consistent for your rider.
After your rider falls, make sure you don't do a power turn to head back to the rider. What we like to do is we like to come off the throttle, let the boat settle and as its slowing down, we turn, we idle back to the rider, this way it makes the lake nice and smooth and you're not sending rollers all over the path that you want to go.
If your body of water does not have rules like running clockwise or counterclockwise, at the end of your path what we do is we do a pre-turn and then we hook it around like a button hook. What this allows you to do is to run right down to the path you just drove and it allows the waves to push to the outside and leave a nice smooth path that you can run all day long.
I hope this was helpful, check back with us at Monster Tower for more instructional videos and get out on the water.
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