David C. Dick
"I was wake boarding before anyone knew what it was, and I spent an entire summer just figuring out how to stand up. Now I'm wake surfing, and nobody knows what that is either."
David Dick grew up spending his summers at his grandparents' home on the water in Mobile, Alabama. It was during these summers that he learned to ski at age five and to wake board at age thirteen.
These days, David can be found in the water wake surfing, a little known sport that positions a surfer behind an inboard boat surfing what David calls a "continuous, massive wave" created from the wake. What makes wake surfing different from wake boarding? No rope. Although a surfer often begins with a rope, he doesn't use it for long, throwing it back into the boat and riding the waves like a more traditional surfer would.
Interested in trying out this extreme sport on your own? David says the key to having a great time is surfing behind an almost-submerged boat. To create huge waves, he loads the boat down with the weight of people and other ballast. Once he's sunk the boat as low as it will go (without actually filling it with water), he hops in the water, stands up using the assistance of a rope, and then throws the rope back and rides the wave as long as he wants-or, for as long as he can stay up.
