Thoughts and demo rides of wake / towsports boats: Moomba Max, Axis A22, MB Sports

[sleek98]

Good deal. I have a 2021 Mojo as well and waiting on 500#s of lead to be delivered. We usually have a light crew and need the extra weight to get the amp up.

90% of the time it will be just my 140# wife or me at 195# 60# son and 35# daughter.

If you have a light crew or not enough lead to compensate then you won’t hit 100% amplitude or pitch for AutoWake. When Autowake can’t achieve the set pitch and roll it will try and compensate by dumping ballast to achieve those number. You end up with less ballast in the boat which means less displacement. AutoWake it mainly a tool to use and try to consistently achieve the same wave every time. The trick though is that it #1 needs weight on the boat first for the system to be used properly. Wether that weight comes from people onboard (medium to large crew) or comes from lead is the same as what the system sees.

For your boat the recipe is probably the same as most others. I would probably start with some bias towards the bow than the stern. That will help you hit the 8.5-9 degree pitch. For instance I bought 500 lbs of lead by 300 of it is in the bow and 200 is in the stern under the rear bags. I’ll fine tune placement of the lead once we get on the water but from everything I’ve read they like to have a little bow weight bias as you already have more rear bias in the factory system. The running attitude of the boat will already add a little pitch so it makes sense adding lead to being the front down.

At the end of the day what you want is running near full ballast all around and use your lead (or people) to fine tune the pitch. The roll usually takes care of itself once the surf tab is deployed so I’d focus on pitch as you’re likely already hitting your roll numbers.

This is where I am getting confused. I thought I would need to put the lead where autowake has the 100% bag, thus making the other bags fill up to keep the same pitch and roll. I assumed the front doesn’t need weight or the system would just fill up the bags.

When we were testing the system Saturday afternoon showing her cousin we had an additional 250# of people in the back and another 175 in the front. Autowake said to move weight to the stern, and the front back was only 25% full. Wonder if it’s possible I need to have the sensors calibrated.

Then again the wave got worse the longer I rode it. First time I got up the wave was good. It was pretty dang small by the time I got done with my third long ride. It started raining on us around noon so I’ll have to keep messing with it.

I need to figure out if it’s possible see the pitch and roll gauges without autowake on so I can see what it’s doing before dumping water

 

[haknslash]

Yup that sounds like the same scenario many of us run into when trying Autowake with a small crew. The boat simply doesn’t have enough weight so it has to compensate. As time goes one it will fine tube more and more and with a small crew that means less water over time as it is having a hard time trying to hit numbers from a light crew. That is why the Autowake wave looks great at first but over time gets worse.

Did you do a calibration of Autowake before using it? That is needed but it sounds like you don’t have enough people onboard to use it for now anyways. The Mojo is a big boat and it will require a lot of weight (people, lead, larger bags etc) to displace the boat. These boats are built to hold large crews onboard and the same holds true for Autowake. It’s made so that when you do actually have a big crew (or lead or extra ballast) that it can help get that samewave the next time you go out with a similar setup or crew size. Say you have a big party of friends come out, you fill ballast and head out on the water. You deploy the surf tab and the wave looks killer and it feels good. If you like the wave That’s when you turn on Autowake and jot down the roll and pitch numbers. The next time you’re out with a similar sized crew (or you buy enough lead to simulate that crew) and you plug in those values on Autowake that’s when your wave should look the same as it did last time out with the big crew.

Hope that makes sense. There is a massive long thread on the Moomba forum from one of the head engineers at SC that he goes over all of the system and how it all works. I’ve copied and pasted some of that in this thread but no idea what page but it’s a good read on the forums.

 

[haknslash]

You do the AW calibration on the water. Need to have a near empty boat so it’s best to do it before you have all your summer gear in it.

Honestly though it sounds like you have a crew size like mine and you’ll need to add a good bit of weight before AW will be of real use. For now I would fill everything 100% and play around with lead placement splitting it up in he boat and just experiment. Adding AW into the equation at the early point may add more confusion than it’s worth or at least that is what many of us lighter crew folks find out. It isn’t until you see the larger crew folks or those with lots of extra ballast start using AW to much better success. For now it will likely just dump your ballast over time as it tries to keep up achieving the values that it will struggle to hit with a light crew and stock ballast.

I actually made my AW worse when I added my WM bags because it added so much more bias towards the stern and midship and since I didn’t add ballast to my bow AW was like “WTF man I can’t bring the bow down like this. Here lemme dump a shitload of rear and midship ballast to try and bring the bow down”. At first my wave would look freaking amazing and within 10 minutes the wave would shrink drastically because it would dump rear ballast while trying to hit the 9 degree pitch. This is why I think my 300 lbs of lead will be much better for AW this season. I may even have to add another 200 lbs before the season gets going if the bow looks like it needs more while everything else is 100% full. This is what it would start to look like but 10 minutes later it was nothing like it...

 

[sleek98]

I did not do a calibration, the dealer never put it in the water as it was delivered end of November and I brought it back to my garage, so I’m guessing I need to do it.

I need to have him come out and help me, he said he would meet me one day to show me what’s going on but I figured I would wait until I had some info after using to see what questions I even need to ask.

I will grab another 500# to bring it up to 1,000#. So we will be at 1250-1300# all in with gear and such.
Sounds like you don’t use autowake very often?

I was shooting for this pitch and roll based upon wake9s review.

 

[haknslash]

I edited in some details above. But yes you’re correct we don’t use AW much and I had to learn how to set up the boat manually, I’m hoping to use AW more once I add in enough lead so that I can consistently hit 9 degrees pitch while being 100% full.

if you’re dealer has someone competent with setting up a wave then for sure have them come out with some extra lead or ballast and help show you how it all plays together. AW is a great tool but there are limits you must hit first before it can really be useful. You need weight one way or the other.

 

[sleek98]

See I think I am having the opposite problem. I am
around 7.6-8 on my pitch so it’s not getting high. I wonder when wake makers will make rear bags for the new mojo. The extra room might not be as much as the max so maybe it’s not worth it for them.

 

[haknslash]

I would calibrate and go from there first. This is a good video to describe how to calibrate and also touches on some of the things I’ve mentioned.

These are some other videos on AW...

 

[haknslash]

See I think I am having the opposite problem. I am
around 7.6-8 on my pitch so it’s not getting high. I wonder when wake makers will make rear bags for the new mojo. The extra room might not be as much as the max so maybe it’s not worth it for them.

I would Imagine WM will make bags for it at some point. You could reach out to their customer service and they are pretty good at letting know you what they’re working on. They may already have something but not yet ready for full production. For example they make a 850 lb bow bag for the Max but it’s not on their site and the only way to get it is through customer service. So you never know what they got so I’d reach out.

I haven’t been on the new Mojo yet so I have no idea of storage compared to my boat but it seems like a shorter Makai. I would guess storage is similar to the Makai. The WM rear bags for my Max are also used on the Makai. For all I know the Mojo could use the same bag. Who knows? I just sold an extra pair of bags I had otherwise would let you at least borrow to test fit them.

 

[cozilla]

I was thinking the same thing that the Makai/Max bag would probably work for the Mojo too.

 

[haknslash]

If someone provides me with the storage compartment dimensions I can compare those to my Max and that would indicate if the same bags could fit. My guesstimate tells me they could fit but no idea if the Mojo has storage bins or not standard or what. I don’t have storage bins for my rear lockers. Max will have the tallest freeboard but my 1200 lb rear bags still leave about 15-18” or so from the top of the compartments. The issue is they no longer provide the 1200 unless you could ask since it is now a 1345 lbs bag which consumes all but about 6” of the storage in a Max. Not sure where exactly that relates to the freeboard of a Mojo but I can check dimensions for someone. Otherwise you could just lug around a few extra hundred lbs of lead under the stock rear bags and retain the storage space from needing to upgrade to larger bags.

 

[sleek98]

Called wake makers and they have not seen a Mojo yet so nothing in their system. I am 2 hours away from mine but I will take some rough measurements when I get back down there again.

I want to start fresh before I add any additional lead or bags. I am going to pull the lead, calibrate the sensors, then add the lead back on the rear seats, fill all the bags 100% full and go out and kick on autowake to look at the measurement, then start moving lead around to see what it needs. I am guessing I will need another 500-750# either from bags or more lead, I would prefer bags over more lead so when we are just out running around i dont have the extra weight. Or we need more friends to come out early in the morning with us.

Also after watching the videos I think autowake also got messed up because Kara left autowake on while I jumped out, got ready then got up, went down the first time got back up but she left it on while she turned around and idled for a min while fishing boats were crossing 15' in front of us, so it was likely dumping the port and bow ballast trying to get the nose up and the boat to roll since it had the kids and extra lead on that side. while she was idling. Atleast that didnt help the problem. Each time I went down the next ride was worse and worse. We were going a decent distance between going down and back up.

Edit: sounds like the mojo bags are 1400 each rear and 1200 bow.

 

[haknslash]

New fins arrived and they look sick! I was going to take some photos but it’s kind of hard to capture the shape of these things so I did a 4K video instead. Pretty interesting shapes all throughout the fin and I can see why they call them The Flare model.

 

[haknslash]

@sleek98 yea I just walked the Mojo walk through video again and there are no midship bags and it’s all front and rear. That is how my Max came before they eventually added midship, Next time you’re at your boat open the rear corner seat cushions and pull the front side of the rear bag up to see if it has extra connectors. If it does you may be able to buy some standard bags to add the your midship under the long side cushion lockers. That would give you another 1000 lbs. Possibly even 2000 lbs of ballast if you can fit 1000 lb bags under your midship cushions. It’s possible in the Max as some guys run the stock 1,000 lb bags in their midship.

I agree with your plan of attack next time out. Pull everything, calibrate and get a good base line. From there you’ll have a goof idea what the boat wants and needs. Have fun as the tuning of the wave is all part of the fun!

 

[sleek98]

The rear locker bags actually run up under the long seats along the sides of the boat. The mojo has a false floor and the extra bags roll out there. I has to pull the bag all the way up through the access hole as it was still rolled up at the very end of it.

 

[haknslash]

Ah gotcha!

 

[haknslash]

Drove down to the boat storage and pulled her out for the first time this year. Dropped her off at the dealer for my last freebie boat service so she will be ready to go for the season. I could definitely tell the extra 500 lbs of lead is in the boat while pulling it but it wasn’t bad and felt stable. Hoping they finish my service in time for me to add the midship ballast vent system so she will be truly ready to hit the water. Brought the new fins with me to swap out on the Neo. They look great and it’s interesting to compare shapes and sizes to my Futures fins.

 

[haknslash]

Making progress adding the new overflow. Of course I forgot some tools I need so I couldn’t complete it today lol. About 90% done though!

 

[haknslash]

Here is Part 1 of the midship venting tutorial. This can technically apply to any boat that has piggyback bags or needing to add an overflow vent instead of manually venting a bag, so this is not really Moomba Max specific. Unfortunately I didn't have all the tools or fittings I needed but I will make a Part 2 video covering the rest of the install and the water test filling and draining the bags.

 

[cozilla]

@haknslash what is the main difference between the Neo and the Nubstep? I am 6'7 about 270. Do you think either of these boards would work for me? I am currently riding a Hyperlite Landlock.

@sleek98 any luck on getting your Mojo dialed in?

 

[haknslash]

At that size you would want the 5’2” Neo or Nubstep (2019+ models). I like my Neo more than the Nubstep. It seems to have a little more rocker and it doesn’t seem to pearl (catch the front) as easily. It feels a little more “active” to me but I’m too amateur to really go into fine details between the two other than just cruising, slashing and carving.

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