Zipwake 300s in the model. After testing zipwake extensively in conditions ranging from glass to 20 MPH wind I've reached my conclusion.
Zipwake's auto roll feature sucks on this boat. Its too slow to correct your roll when driving through waves sideways. The only way that it helps is if you massively overload one side of your boat, it will help it not lean to that side, but it doesn't perfectly level out the boat and there is a massive cost to that leveling: it interferes with steering, slows you down big time, and greatly reduces fuel economy. I think the jet drive on the boat makes using trim tabs to control roll problematic because the jet drive has such a loose connection with the water that dropping a tab on one side wants to steer the boat more than it wants to level it. The auto roll feature also claims to help with the turning performance of the boat. It definitely impacts the turning performance of the boat, but I wouldn't say it helps. It changes the turning characteristics because it deploys a tab on one side when turning with auto roll on, but the way it changes the steering is not what I would call helpful, its makes the steering feel weird and off. I've learned to always keep auto roll off.
Zipwake's auto pitch feature is nice but doesn't work how I was hoping it would. I was hoping that when driving in rough conditions (20 MPH wind with white caps) at speeds of roughly 25-35 MPH that zipwake would know to push the trim tabs down when the bow of the boat is pointing up due to a wave, then rapidly retract the trim tabs once the boat's bow is in a good place (I believe Seakeeper ride claims to do this). Instead, the auto pitch feature is based on the speed of the boat. When the boat is going 5-20 MPH the tabs are all the way down to make the boat plain faster, then the automatically pull up at speed. This works very well (huge difference in time to plain). You don't want the tabs deployed once your up to speed because they will slow you down and kill your fuel efficiency, but you do want them down when the conditions are bad, and the auto mode won't take care of this, so you have to manually put them down and up based on the waves your hitting. They work well at helping you cut through chop on rough days, but I doubt that they work any better than much cheaper trim tabs that don't claim to automatically control everything.
I was hoping zipwake could help list the boat to one side for wake surfing. I tested this extensively with many different ballast loads and it doesn't work. It helps with wake surfing in two ways:
(1) If you load your boat with a ton of weight and it results in a super steep wave, you can deploy the tab on the side of the wake surf wave to make the wave longer and less steep. This is nice, but I was hoping for the opposite so I wouldn't need as much weight to make a great wave.
(2) If your boat is having trouble getting up to wake surfing speed because you overloaded it, you can deploy both tabs an equal amount to get you up to speed, but be aware this will lengthen your wave and make it less steep.
I test drove the Kyma K7 for about 6 hours. Unfortunately the day I got to test it was the calmest day ever (zero wind). The K7 has oversized seakeeper ride interceptors on it. Ed (co-owner of Kyma) told me he tried seakeeper ride in the size that seakeeper recommended and it was not effective, so he went to a bigger size. I posted pics below of zipwake on my boat vs seakeeper ride on the K7. You can see how much bigger the seakeeper ride interceptors are (note that seakeeper ride is not available for my boat because it has the hydraulic surf point tabs that would hit the seakeeper interceptors). My thoughts on seakeeper ride on the Kyma K7:
- We turned seakeeper off when driving on flat water because it massively interfered with the steering of the boat in bizarre and unpredictable ways.
- I only got to test seakeeper on rough water by doing a bunch of circles to make waves and then driving over them. This was not a good test so I can't say how well the system works in rough water.
- For wake surfing, seakeeper was able to instantly list the boat to one side. We filled the ballast tanks equally on both sides of the boat, which produced a tiny surf wave due to no listing, then we engaged seakeeper to list the boat and it would instantly list the boat to one side and massively improve the wave. Keep in mind that Ed said this only worked properly when put oversized seakeeper ride onto his boat. This was a killer feature, it worked almost as good as the surf gates on my Axis T220 (surf gates are patented Malibu tech that wont work on a jet drive). Its really nice to not have to put a ton of weight on one side of your boat to surf and to have the ability to switch the wave from one side to the other with the touch of a button. Also keep in mind that the Kyma is a single engine jet boat (all 20+ft Yamaha's are twin engine). Single engine jet boats are a lot easier to create a good surf wave behind. Note that the stock wave on the Kyma K7 (stock ballast) is not impressive; its hardly better than the stock wave on the Yamaha 222XE. If your expecting to get a good wave behind a 222XE you need to add 700-1200 lbs of extra ballast in the right part of the boat.
Zipwake on my Yamaha 222XE
Oversized seakeeper ride integrated into the hull of the Kyma K7:
