The hunt (part 1)

This spring we were fortunate enough to realize our cottage dream by splitting the purchase with my father. The first thing that came to mind when the proposition of acquiring a cottage became a viable possibility was that it was absolutely imperative to acquire a decent boat to wakeboard behind.

I'd been wakeboarding a dozen times or so in the last ten years, but it was always something I felt was too inaccessible without the benefit of having either a cottage or a decent body of water close to home. Since our local body of water is rarely calm and usually polluted enough that we don't swim, I never pursued the dream.

The first thing that became incredibly clear was that buying a true "wakeboard" boat was practically unaffordable, or rather we were not willing to spend 30k or more to get one. There are wakeboard model boats down around the 20k-25k range used if you have time, patience, and the willingness to drive or pay shipping, but more often than not they need some work anyways, which could add thousands in a heartbeat.

Frustrated by that realization, I gave up briefly, thinking that for the moment at least, this was most likely a pipe dream.

Then one day it dawned on me...wakeboard boats evolved from old ski boats, so maybe there was some light at the end of the tunnel after all. The very first thing i did was Google "budget wakeboard boats" and one of the first hits was a very helpful page on thewakeboardreport.com which includes a nice chart showing some good choices in older (and newer) wakeboard boats.



The main recommendations in older ski boats were; Malibu sunsetters, Supra Sunsports, and Ski Nautique 2001's. At this point I started poking around the internet looking for any of these three boats and getting a feel for cost, availability, and features of these three. I also tried to dig a little deeper and find out why people liked these models and also took note of how much info was available for each on fixing, maintaining, and customizing these boats.

to be continued...