Never Pull Tubes from a Wakeboard Tower (Aftermarket or OEM)
Boating season is just around the corner, and if you are as excited as us, you are getting your boating playlist ready and daydreaming about getting in that wake. Even though wakeboarding is our favorite reason to be on the water, we still spend quite a bit of time tubing or relaxing in a party cove. Each year we see lots of boaters pulling their tubes from wakeboard towers instead of a device rated for this activity. A universal safety rule in the aftermarket wakeboard tower industry is that boaters are forbidden to pull tubes from any aftermarket or OEM wakeboard tower.
Monster Tower and our sister company XTP are the world’s largest manufacturers of wakeboard towers. Monster Tower provides the aftermarket wakeboard tower while XTP is the leading manufacturer of OEM wakeboard towers. You will find XTP OEM towers on new boats from Moomba, Sea Ray, Yamaha, and Supra. All towers that we manufacture come with a warning sticker alerting of the dangers of pulling tubes from wakeboard towers. This summer heed to our warning and invest in a safe, tube-rated tow bar that won’t damage your boat or put passengers at risk. Don’t worry, we have you covered with our TurboSwing tow bar. TurboSwing is a ski-tow bar that fits around your outboard.
Aftermarket Wakeboard Tower Testing Results
At Monster Tower we put our wakeboard towers through rigorous testing to ensure the safety of our riders. The results of our product testing showed that pulling tubes from towers creates a suction-cup type of phenomenon. The force of pulling a tube is much greater than the force of pulling a wakeboarder. This added force can lead to a variety of dangerous results.
Spider Cracks in Fiberglass
While installing your Monster Tower, you may have remembered reinforcing at the mounting points. This additional reinforcement helps protect the fiberglass from the force of a rider. Pulling tubes creates more force than the fiberglass is able to handle which will create spider cracks at the mounting points. Spider cracks will lead to bigger problems down the road, such a holes in your boat at the tower’s mounting points.
The Wrong Kind of Collapsible Tower
One of our favorite Monster Tower features is that all of our wakeboard towers fold down. This is an asset during storage, trailering, or going under bridges, however, when a wakeboard tower comes down on its own, your passengers are at serious risk. Pulling tubes from a wakeboard tower causes undue stress on your boat. Weakened fiberglass can lead to a hole at the mounting point. This hole will prevent the tower from being supported properly and cause it to fall. Passengers can be seriously injured by weak fiberglass causing a wakeboard tower to fall.
At Monster Tower, our goal is to ensure you have the safest, most fun time on the water imaginable. If you're planning to tow a wakeboarder, a tower is the perfect solution. However, if you're hoping to pull tubes behind your boat we highly encourage you to consider a TurboSwing.
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