I am considering purchasing a zerotow boogie and am looking for feedback on performance in wind chop. I am on Lake Ontario in Canada and ride wind chop/wave conditions. It looks amazing in clean conditions but am I going to be disappointed in trying to use in major chop?
A mate does upwind and down wind runs on his. You need to develop technique to ride in chop but they do work ok just modulate the speed. This vid shows me out in a messy onshore day no problem.
They're not great in light chop. They're bad in heavy chop. Since they are light the weight balance can be an issue. There are ways to adjust the rocker of the base due to how much air you put in it. Different runs of zerotow have different rockers. I think it was the first run had to have the battery pushed back to avoid nose dives. The new run has to have the battery pushed forward since it has more rocker. Either way I don't see any of the guys with zerotows or home made boogies out when the wind is strong enough to wing. (15MPH) So I assume (maybe incorrectly) that is about the wind speed where it's not fun anymore.
Agree over 12knots in open water is hard. V2 hull is better than the first run which I have.
Thanks for all the feedback, looks like it will unfortunately not be a good fit for my conditions. Maybe a future design will be more suited.
They're not the best in chop, but still worth it. I've done some upwind downwind in 15-20knots - with the V1 hull.
Tips:
- See if you can find an inside line with more protection for your upwind leg, then cut out to the wind line once you're at the top of your run.
- Put on a reasonably sized foil so that you can ride the boogie slower. The slower you go on the boogie the better it handles the chop.
- Learn to modulate the throttle at the right times to avoid it jumping over chop.
- Waterstarts in the chop are better running perpendicular to the wind, not downwind.
