Month: August 2017

Jack, a middle aged owner of a motorized S4 from Texas writes  -“Love to jump the wakes of jet skis and other boats.”
Anyone who owns a Wavewalk would immediately understand what Jack is talking about, and identify with him, but other kayakers, canoeists and people who fish out of Jon boats, dinghies and skiffs would probably raise an eyebrow when they read this sentence –

For people who go in small watercraft and fish from them, a wake is a series of fast moving waves created in the water by the passage of a fast motorboat, and it is a threat. Kayakers hate wakes, and canoeists dread them, because a wake hitting their unstable vessel on its broadside can capsize it.
But even passengers on board bigger and most stable boats, such as dinghies, skiffs and Jon boats, are not big fan of wakes, to say the least, and they would not associate wakes with fun. Although wakes are typically not powerful enough to capsize a good size Jon boat or skiff, a wake suddenly hitting such a boat on its broadside is enough to destabilize passengers who stand in it, or on its deck, if they are unprepared for the sudden sideways tilt induced by the wake. And losing your balance in such a small boat can mean that you’d go overboard, or worse – capsize your boat, frequently as a result of your abrupt change in position causing another another passenger on board to lose their balance, in a chain reaction…

It is easy to destabilize a person standing on the deck of a Jon boat, or a skiff, but it is almost impossible to destabilize a person standing in a Wavewalk S4, with a leg in each hull. Why is that? It’s because a person standing this way in their S4 and momentarily losing their stability would simply drop on the S4’s saddle, to the lower Riding posture, which is the same position in which people driving a personal watercraft (a.k.a. “jet-ski”) drive their fast ride, or by extension, the same position offered by all-terrain vehicles (ATV) and snowmobiles.

All these vehicles, namely Wavewalks, PWC, ATV and snowmobiles are the most stable in their domains, and for their size, and they all offer similar saddle seats and riding postures to their users. There is no coincidence here, since the riding posture they offer is similar to the riding posture on horses and motorcycles, and it is naturally stable, namely that a person riding with a leg on each side of the saddle has the full ability to react intuitively, instantly, and most effectively to any change, and thus balance themselves in the most efficient way.

To put it clearly – a motorcycle is a vehicle with no stability it itself whatsoever. It you try to make a motorcycle stand without a person driving and balancing it, or without a mechanical support such as a metal leg or a wall, it would always fall on its side. But give that motorcycle a driver who rides its saddle, and it could go over the roughest terrain, and at high speed. This is to say that all the stability perceived in a moving motorcycle comes from its driver, and only from them, and it is the result of ability to balance themselves effectively while riding their vehicle’s saddle.

In comparison, a Wavewalk kayak offers the same balancing capability, plus its own stability as a twin-hull boat, namely a catamaran.

Read more about kayak stability »

The following video shot by Captain Larry Jarboe’s on board his Wavewalk S4 demonstrates how little effect a fast motorboat’s wake has on him:

So what’s fun about driving a Wavewalk S4 in wakes? The fun is that nothing bad happens, and you get to hop and bounce, and maybe get splashed a little, in a worst case scenario.

By Fin Gold

North Carolina

Fin lives next to the ocean, and he loves fishing in shallow water. He’s been fishing out of an 18 ft skiff, but being a big boat with a heavy motor, that skiff drafts 18″, which is less than optimal for shallow water, especially at low tide, when the risk of getting stranded increases. Fin and his family also didn’t like how their big skiff felt in choppy water, and how it reacted to other boats’ wakes. Fin ordered an S4 with the intention of having it replace his 18 ft skiff. After he and his wife tested their S4, they decided to sell their skiff. The S4 will also replaces their tandem kayak. Says Fin: –

The video where I slide it down the ramp is the very first time trying it out.
The young guy on the boat is my youngest son Adam. He is a student and he was excited beforehand. Then he loved testing it out.

The videos are all at less than 1/2 throttle as we follow the 3.5 hp Tohatsu engine break-in procedure.

The S4 also lets us explore all the coastal islands where previously we could only take a kayak.

One question​ we had was the best position for the engine tilt. It looks like it has 5 holes for tilt and it came in the center hole. Any advice for that?

Here are the first pictures and videos. All unedited happiness.

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More from Fin »
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