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When wakeboarding there are countless factors that will affect your ability to balance and perform tricks. This is a coming together of man and machine and like formula 1 it's incredibly important that you fine tune the system in order to get the very best performance out of both parties. For instance there is the wakeboard tower that will set the height of the towe rope and thus effect the speed you travel at and how easy it is for you to perform jumps. Then there's the length of the rope – and the optimum length here is going to vary depending on the boat that you are using and on how fast you want to go. Even the speed is different from boat to boat and depending on whether you are wakeboarding or barefoot waterskiing. Then there's the ballast, and this really is a very precise science. Wakeboard ballast is something that is achieved using both the inbuilt ballast of the boat, the inherent weight of the boat, and the addition of fat sacks for boats which are bags that get filled with water and added to various parts of the boat in order to affect the weight. The idea here is that by adding weight to the boat you can stabilize it and help it to cut through waves while avoiding capsizing, while at the same time causing it to create a large wake which will follow the boat and provide the surface for you to wakeboard on. If you have the right ballast then this will optimize the size of the wake without affecting the speed of the boat negatively. But you need to think of how heavy the boat is to start with. If your boat has its own ballast and is a weighty piece of machinery, and is carrying lots of passengers, then this is going to mean that you don't want to add too much weight to the boat. However if there's only a driver and the boat is very light, then adding ballast is important. When you choose fat sacks for boats you also need to get the right ones for the make and model of your boat. If you have a Moomba boat for instance then you want Moomba ballast in order to get the best fit. You then need to think though about where you are going to put this extra weight once you have it. For instance, putting the ballast at the back of the boat is always advisable in order to create the most wake as this is what gets dragged through the water. However make the boat too heavy at the back and you will make it hard for the boat to go forward. Meanwhile this will cause the wave to be too sharp and to spill over at the top making it hard to ride. In a perfect world the distribution is around 40/60 with 40% of the weight at the front and 60% of the weight at the back. Then you need to think about balance... Getting the right fat sacks for your wakeboarding boat is important. Follow the links to learn more about wakeboard ballast.
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