Wake Surfers Ruin it again...

I feel bad for you but honestly your first mistake was living where there is a home owners association. I understand you don't want to be next to someone who does not cut their grass or has junk cars or heaven forbid junk boats But I have never heard good things about HOA's, you end up with a bunch of Mrs Kravit's. I guess you need to be more active in the HOA. It's alway a couple who ruin it for all. I wish you luck.

the guys consistently dogging on the wakeboarders and surfers are shooting themselves in the foot. it doesn't matter if it's two skis or one, a wakeboard or surfboard, a chair or tube. we're all the same to those complaining. it's either to loud of an engine, to loud of speakers, to big of a wake, etc. etc. a watersport is a watersport to them. if you think any local legislation/ordinance is going to only carve out wakeboarders and surfers and leave you footers alone, you're silly.

that being said, maintaining 50ft from a shore or dock should be a no brainer IMO.

I think it's an education thing. John, our BF cove on Memorial day had 2-3 surf boats chugging along all day. No reason that I can think of why those guys couldn't/shouldn't have been in deeper, more open water. Nevermind that they screwed up much of the water for the calmer watersports, they created even bigger enemies with the home owners you speak of. I believe one of the boats was owned and driven by a VP at PCM so he, of all people, should've known better. I think it's important for DNR and HOAs to understand that a slalom boat pulling through a course or a barefooter running through their cove isn't going to rock their dock much more than a low horsepower jon boat.

8122pbrainard wrote: jbach wrote: if you think any local legislation/ordinance is going to only carve out wakeboarders and surfers and leave you footers alone, you're silly. Josh, I feel you are the one who is being silly. The ordinances against excessive wake size are already in place on some waters. It's not the particular sport but rather shoreline erosion that is pushing the laws.

    I agree with the part in red. Funny thing is these eco types only seem to target wakeboarders and surfers but not tubers.

    On our lake, tubing causes way more erosion and shore damage than any other watersport, mostly because the tubers outnumber the skiers/ boarders / surfers about 25:1. My assumption, (which may be wrong) is that people look at boarders and surfers as "riff raff" because of the music and blinged out boats. Which quite possibly could be a fair observation in a lot of instances. The other thing is that alot of these guys are younger and probably don't represent themselves well during conversation/confrontation.

    Part of the problem is that everyone stands around pointing fingers. They are trying to get approval to put a course in on our lake right now and aren't gaining much support. I assume that is because the skiers are small in number and the wakeboarders don't care if they get a course or not. If people had more appreciation for each others sports and learned to work together and communicate alot of these laws would go away.

    Erosion is going to happen from any boat, wind, course of nature etc.. How much worse it REALLY is due to heavier weighted boats no one will ever know.One thing people are missing here is that as boats have gotten bigger/heavier overall boat traffic has increased as well. My experiences with people complaining about stuff like this is because they have a personal vendetta against a certain "type" of person due to a previous incident. ie, I was skiing and those wakeboarders ruined my water,I was sitting on my dock and that boat with the wakeboarders came by with loud rap music playing or I was relaxing in my pontoon and these surfers rolled a wave onto my deck. Yes, in these three instances the boarders/surfers would be the d*cks, I agree. But these people don't care about the erosion, they care about having the whole lake to themselves. The erosion is just an excuse. They are the same people who hike,bike,cross country ski, and snowshoe but piss and moan when they meet someone on the trail with a snowmobile, atv,or hunting etc. They think they are the only ones who have a right to be there and until that changes nothing is ever going to get better. Remember skiers....when the wakeboats are all banned,they will have to blame the erosion on something else. You'll be next.

Mike

   

Tim D wrote: Complain to DNR that the 2 stroke engines on the pontoons are causing too much pollution and should be banned.

Tim,
The regs are already in place. I remember the old days when you would start up your 2 stroke and you would have an oil sheen at the aft end of the boat!    BTW, that's if the O/B started! And, the smoke!! Remember the Merc straights that for reverse you needed to start the engine backwards? That was always an exciting experience when docking.