G'day all,

my son has got a bee in his bonnet about wake boots so wanted to know if the current North wake boots (NKB Banana Boot) will fit an older North Sky 138cm 2009 board?

I know the boots will fit the track system on the North boards but not sure if they will fit onto the old fixed holes style boards?

Anyone have any idea?

cheers,

Robbie

Up in NT boots can be used...

Try this option...




Plus this....



=

I'd say no, I tried to stick some wake style bindings on a few older kite boards and they used to use a strange mounting distance.
Some of the new boards now use the wake binding mounting distance.

Good luck.

If you have the Yellow boots they are actually Ronix and not North. The green and black are "North" boots but they are made by Ronix also.

What you need to do is measure the insert spacing. If you have a space of 6 inches, you will be able to fit these boots on. If you have a space of 7 or 6.5 there is actually a metal adapter piece you can get to fit the boots on. You will have to ring up Ronix distributer about that, or look on Ebay or something as they may be hard to find as they only came with Ronix boots on the 2009 line.

Almost all boards produced now use 6-inch spacing. Older boards often used 6.5 or another obscure number.

Puetz said..
ps btw, I'm not trying to be a mean dad by making him buy them, just trying to teach him the way of the world!

Hey Karl,

Time to move on, go and see mum she might be an easier touch for new boots.

high as a kite said..

Puetz said..

ps btw, I'm not trying to be a mean dad by making him buy them, just trying to teach him the way of the world!

Hey Karl,

Time to move on, go and see mum she might be an easier touch for new boots.

... tee hee, the little (if you could call him little) sh!t knows how to wait til mum has had a couple of beers, smooch up to her and she's an easy target for sure,,,,, I might warn her he's coming with a plan in mind,,,, I told her don't believe the hype!!!!!!!

Come on Robbie, stop been a tight wad.
It might mean the difference between him standing on the 1st or 2nd position on the podium. You would never forgive yourself

Puetz said..
Ian, Karl hasn't emailed you has he???? cheers, Robbie

Nah.

I bought boots recently (North/Ronix) and I can confirm they are the nuts to ride in, especially new school riding. I came from a wake/snowboard background so I didn't have the hangup about being locked into the board. I just wish I had got them earlier.

I ended up buying a new board last season then bought the boots, turns out they fit, newer boards have the correct hole pattern.

There are a couple of things to note:
Some people will tell you, you need a board specific for mounting boots - personally the jury is out on that one for me, a binding is a binding. But the argument is that it will have a stiffer section between the mount points and better reinforced to handle the "extra" load of having the boot.

If I had done it again I would have probably bought a board specifically for boots, but I didn't and I like the flexibility of being able to wack my pads on if there's little wind.

Also you'll want to go slightly bigger in the board you choose, when I stuck boots on the difference is most felt in trying to get back upwind, I find I have to be powered big time.

Maybe a trip to your local wake shop to see if the holes line up, that's what I did. You can find the Ronix line of boots online for a good price, I went for the Ronix/North as the marketing BS said they were better reinforced for use in the salt water, which kills boots.

See if you can get a demo of some boards, otherwise go second hand for the board...

In terms of finance - if you want to teach your son how the world works why don't you loan him the money for the board and boots under the condition that if he doesn't make the payment the gear will get repossessed until it does... if you really want to be a hard ar$e then charge him interest by the way of doing the dishes each night.

(I feel sorry for my son already and he's only 1.7m)

Rob

The reason people argue for specific boards are due to a number of factors:

1. Rocker (the curve of the board) - for wake style boards, there is more curve (bigger rocker)
2. The width of the board (too narrow won't work for boots)
3. Reinforcement for bindings
4. Longer

Generally you want all 4 of these. Just getting a longer board designed for bindings won't necessarily work. Go in and look at some specialised wakestyle boards like Liquid Force, Cabrinha Custom, Flexifoil Hadlow, etc and you'll see how different they are.

If you want a cheap short term alternative, you could find a second hand wakeboard and bindings. Plenty of people used the old slingshot wakeboards behind kites and he should be able to pick up a second hand pair with bindings as a starting point. It'll be really sluggish and require being more powered, but he should get a good feel for it at a low cost.

Mate how big is your kid? I might be able to find something for him, or if not maybe one of the shops has a secondhand board for him, or even someone else on here. People always have old gear laying around I'm sure we can get him set-up with something for pretty cheap!

... thanks again guys!

My son is a big kid and just turned 16 at 179cm, really shot up in the last year too, grew a whole 1 foot in no time, poor bugger might end up like his dad (6'4") one day!

He's got a 132 x 39 and uses my 138 x 42 most of the time but ground down the rail riding in shallow water over reefs and beach so is now in dire repair.

Darwin doesn't always get wind and is not too powerful either so we ride bigger kites and bigger boards too, so I figure he needs at least a 140 to 145-ish x 42 - 43cm-ish as his bread and butter board, and can always go smaller when the wind does come up.

cheers,

Robbie