Any of you water guys kite with a wakeskate?

And if so how much does it differ from a ply board?

Just curious.

I think Phree has ... kind of a skim board innit?

Hey Chris
A lot depends on the shape of the board you are talking about. A few friends use skim boards and wakeskates for playing around doing more freestyle riding. My buddy Jim starting making his own boards a number of years ago and makes kite skates. You can see some photos of the shape here:

http://www.jellyfishboards.ca/Products.html

under the video the section there is video with a buddy Craig using the skate in Brazil.

For skim boards and skates they are overall flat but a bit of curve at the nose of a skim and rocker both ends on the skate.
You can make any board from plywood - even a decent riding twintip. It's just playing with the amount of flex you want for a ride.

I have toyed with the idea of using a wake/kite skate, for use at the local beach I'm not allowed to have wheels. I could stay in close to the beach and use my FBs!

I have this:



http://i792.photobucket.com/albums/yy201/apextech1/IMAG0055....

Its a Tottora Surf Skate 5'0" x 19", Epoxy w/ NSI pads , constructed in China beleive it or not. I tried to get a bit more info on it from the owner of Totora but he wasn't very receptive. I havent had a chance to kite with it yet, but I used it last weekend towed behind my boat at the lake, alot of fun, super skatey with the current fin setup.

the wakeskate is mini kick tail. i ride a version of it. its basically a wakeboard no straps or pads and tight foam top (actually a yoga mat glue to the top). its fun, in the chop not so good and can go up wind . the ply boards are more for light air favoring a door type design. and the blended version is the skim board , flat and wide deck padded out with toebars they great for light air. all these types do best in flat for pop shuvits and grabby skate style stuff. after about 20min of fun if and a few drops the fun is over ...except maybe skim they do well in wash and super shallow, nice small wave action.

ply boards, to me, implies DIY stuff from regular TT to skim. usually ply board stuff suffers from weight issues in general , unless you get spendy with materials. hard to be the vac bag board for weight flex and durability and super low $.

I ride a wake skate which I built out of two layers of 1/8 inch plywood and then glassed. I built up the tail with extra pad before laying the traction pad down. It rides well. I think that the big differences between a Foam shaped wakeskate and a plywood kite skate are rocker and weight. Less rocker will go up wind better and when doing kick flips the extra weight does help it to not blow away. I am not super good at it but they are fun to play on in light-ish wind.