Wakeboarding for Beginners

Rope Handling

Synopsis: A newbie's guide to using a wakeboard rope. How to tie, lengthen, and wind your rope. What length to ride at. Among other helpful tidbits.

The rope is a source of problems for many beginning boaters. It always seems to manage to get tangled, frayed, knotted, or twisted. Usually this is just from a lack of proper rope maintenance knowledge (or the boat-owner just not caring enough to put forth any effort). But with the rising cost of high-quality wakeboard ropes, it may be in your best interest to go the extra mile (really it's only about an extra foot!) to take care of your line.

The first thing to learn is how to wind your rope.

Some wakeboard handles (notably the Straight Line Bantam) have a rope-winding gimmick built in. I have never actually found this to be useful. The rope ends off sliding off and getting into a tangled mess. Your best bet is to use the good old-fashioned technique. Grab the rope about two feet from the end, extend your arms all the way, grab, pull your hands together to make a loop, repeat.

Or, put more simply, make loops with a circumference of your wingspan.

When you have the rope all wound up nicely, what do you do with the handle? Some ropes come with a velcro strap that wraps around rope and handle. That'll work fine. But if yours didn't, I learned a neat little trick from the show-ski team that I am a part of the will be of some use to you.

Just remember this maxim: Rope through the handle, handle through the rope.

It's as simple as that. You put the loop of rope halfway through the handle, and then loop the handle back around to go through the rope. This should "tie off" the rope so it doesn't unwind and you can use the handle to carry the rope by to boot. When you want to use the rope again, just reverse the process.

Another thing that novices sometimes struggle with is lengthening and shortening the rope. The first question you may have is why you would even want to do this.

Well, the answer is simple. At different points behind the boat the wake is a different shape and width. The farther back you go, the farther it is between the two wakes. Since the softest place to land is right past the second wake, more experienced riders who are able to jump farther will generally use a longer line. Novice riders will not be able to clear the wake without a shorter line.

Most ropes will come with pre-made tie-offs at set intervals. To use these, just slide a bit of the rope (coming from the handle-side) through the pre-tied loop to make a new loop. Put the loop you just made over your pylon and you're done. You can also use this technique to tie the rope off at arbitrary lengths. Just make a loop with your hands and then treat it as you would if it was a pre-tied loop.

The general principle behind this is that you are essentially tying a slip-knot. This will help prevent the rope from coming off of the tower while you are towing a rider. The harder the pull on the rope, the tighter the knot will hold on, making it very reliable.

To take it off, just put your finger under it and slide it up over the top. The knot should just pull through once there's nothing in the middle impeding it.

This tends to work better with no-stretch spectra lines (which you definitely want to use for wakeboarding anyway, read the Rope Buyer's Guide to find out why). Regular ski lines will tighten up too much and you may need pliers to loosen them.

So there you have it, the basics of rope handling. Although even the best tie-offs and rope winding won't prevent you from running over your rope. Check out the boat safety article for tips on avoiding that common pitfall.

Need help on this trick? Visit our wakeboarding discussion board.