Wakeboarding is the latest evolution of waterskiing sports. It can be thought of as waterskiing on a small surf board with footstraps (or boots similar to waterski boots). The stance is partially or completely sideways. The experience is a cross between mono-skiing and surfing, but it's a real synergy of the two, not an immitation of either. It could also be thought of as similar to snowboarding, but in practice the two are quite different.
Wakeboarding started in the mid 1980's with the Skurfer (which was mostly a waste of time but got the whole wakeboard thing started). For a while Wakeboarding was also known as Skiboarding, but this name has become less popular. Wakeboarding is the fastest growing watersport in the world! If you can waterski and haven't tried wakeboarding, you must! At every major waterski lake the world over you'll find more and more people wakeboarding. Wakeboarding requires less expensive boats, slower speeds and has much higher fun levels than waterskiing, it's also much less fatiguing than mono-skiing.
Modern Wakeboards are thin, light and at least as high-tech as the top waterskis. Many specialist wakeboard companies have appeared, or adapted, in the last few years to support the increasing demand. Current designs are basically either surf shaped (e.g. Shapiro) or twin tip (e.g. BAFF).
Wakeboard bindings (footstraps or boots) are built on plates which are interchangeable on most of the quality wakeboards. This allows the rider to choose from many foot bindings independently to the choice of board.
If you get into wakeboards you'll learn lots of great fun moves, a whole new languageto describe them all and you'll wonder why you didn't try it years ago.
