Wakeboarding is too violent... Go kiteboarding Hitting the water was waaaaay more painful wakeboarding... However ---> I broke my left femur in 17 parts while kiteboarding... but i came back without any doubt...
My dad actually broke his neck. He recovered fully with a (I think..) titanium plate in his neck. He dove off the boat into shallow water. Wakeboarding doesn't hurt at all. Believe me, I'm not much of a "Manne", but I've had my fair share of falls, and they haven't hurt much. The worst one would be landing on the left side of my face and reddening it for the next week or so.
It's something I've been interested in trying, although Kite Boarding seems more attractive, but mostly I just Ski and Snowboard.
If you snowboard wakeboarding will come a lot easier. The hard part is getting out of the water, because it requires a lot of strength (EG: You're being pulled the force of 30mph by a boat holding on to a rubber handle trying to stand up on a board), but it's fun once you get up.
Wakeboarding is okay, we have lots of small lakes and parks where you can do it, and people rent equipments and boats for it. Its a lot more fun on the open ocean out here but we are starting to get effects of the oil spill from the gulf stream and a lot of rental places are closing down. As far as watersports go jet-skis are wayyyy more fun than wakeboarding, and if you have your own boat (its better to just rent unless youre wealthy or go fishing every day) you can do a lot more fun stuff like parasailing and stuff. Sailing is also very fun but you cant wakeboard from a sailboat unless you have a hundred thousand dollar racing trimaran or something. If anyone ever wants to come down to south florida hit me up and we can hang out or you can crash with us. I like snowboarding way better though, but i dont go that often because transatlantic flights arent cheap :p
I'll teach you kiteboarding anytime for free (pool harbor or south hampton work ok for me). Once you control the power of the kite you will be like: fuck anything else...
