How Wakeboarding began
How it all began
In 1991 a company called Hyperlite got together with some of the best surfboard shapers in Hawaii to design and build the first compression-moulded neutral-buoyancy wakeboard, a hybrid of a water-ski and a surfboard. Hyperlite added boot to the board which allowed riders to jump high off the water. The Hyperlite’s neutral buoyancy allowed the rider to submerge it for easy deepwater starts. The board had a thin profile and would carve like a slalom ski. It also had phasers (large dimples on the bottom), which broke up water adhesion and gave the board a quicker “loose” feel and softer landings from wake jumps.
Call me a dork if you want but your history of wakeboarding is way off.
I know–because I was wakeboarding a long time before 1991….When there was maybe a couple thousand people at best wakeboarding I was in it less than 100 miles away from one of the wakeboarding epicenters. (Texas)
I was really into waterskiing of all sorts until an injury stopped me going professional. Now I am in Singapore just working and having fun.
Here is the real story–
In San Diego back in the mid 1980’s a guy named Tony Finn was riding surfboards behind his boat.
In another part of the USA a guy named Jimmy Redmond was doing the same thing in Austin Texas.
There was also a group of guys who would do tricks on a kneeboard where you stand up on the board and ride it…
Kneeboarding was way more popular back then. I was heavily into kneeboarding and barefooting.
Both of those guys around the same time attached foot straps to their boards and started companies. It was 1985 or 1986 or so, and 1.5 years later is when I bought my first board when I was a whopping 13 years old.
Tony Finn started a company called Skurfer and Jimmy Redmond started one called Redline.
Both of those designs were using roto molding… like a clamshell of plastic with foam injected inside.
They were making water skis with compression molding for a long time… and eventually they put the same technology to use into kneeboards first.
I still remember when it came out… those boards were first introduced if I am not mistaken by HO sports… a guy named Ted Bevelaqua would ride them.
It caught on quickly but then again you still had riders like Mario Fossa who stuck with the roto molded jobs for a long time.
Later on they applied the same technology to those early wakeboards… instead of roto molding and shooting it full of foam they would compression mold the boards and cook it…the same way almost they would do skis.
Wakeboarding started in Hawaii? No way.
As for the Hawaii story— I am not sure about that but it is plausible— but I know for sure they would design kneeboards first using foam and fiber glass….just like they still do surfboards….
For kneeboards it was done all in Florida (imagine that—waterski heaven making something new)
The reason for this is the molds for making compression molded anything was expensive as **** so they would get shapers to make the boards and would work out the bugs….
If they didn’t like this or that they could easily change the design with a glass board.
Once they had the right prototype then they would make the molds and churn out boards.
Once you make that mold it is impossible to change and getting a new one is too expensive.
With all that being said, if they were in Hawaii for anything it was because Hawaii has numerous shapers to work on the project.