What Are Wakeboard Pylons?

What Are Wakeboard Pylons?

When you go wakeboarding you usually want to do the direct opposite from what you do when you go water skiing. When you go water skiing you want as little weight as possible in the boat because more weight in the boat creates wakes behind the boat and wakes can be very bad for water skiing. A wakeboard, just by virtue of its name, thrives on higher wakes and invites more weight in the boat to create higher wakes so that the board can be dragged across bigger wakes to get bigger air. With this in mind the other difference between wakeboarding and water skiing is the desire to get big air. You want to get as high up as you can when you are wakeboarding so that you can perform tricks and stunts.

The way a wakeboard rider gets off the water like that, besides jumping the wakes of course, is through the use of a wakeboard pylon. A wakeboard pylon is a pole mounted securely on the back of the boat that is about six or seven feet off the top of the boat and the wakeboard tow cable is attached to it. The taller the wakeboard pylon is the higher off the water you will get and experienced wakeboard riders call that getting big air. It then stands to reason that if you are new to wakeboarding you may want to start out with a shorter wakeboard pylon until you get used to catching that air and controlling yourself. Jumping right to big air with a tall wakeboard pylon could be a recipe for disaster.

Takes A Lot To Do-It-Yourself

Successfully installing a safe wakeboard pylon requires a lot more effort than just bolting a six-foot high pole to the bottom of the boat. There are a lot of factors to keep in mind when installing the pylon and chief among them is to remember that this pylon will be pulling a person. And if you incorrectly mount that pylon to your boat one sudden movement can yank out the pylon from the bottom of the boat and the boat starts sinking. That is why when professionals mount a wakeboard pylon to a boat they build an entire mounting unit that creates a safe and secure place to mount the pylon without ever having to secure the pylon directly to the boat. If this is unfamiliar to you then you might want to have a professional install your pylon.

Catching big air is the point of being on a wakeboard but when you do that you want to be sure you are safe. If you have no experience in installing a wakeboard pylon then get a professional to do it because it does not take much for an incorrectly mounted pylon to cause a lot of damage and problems.