RAIL YARD WAKE PARK
July 10, 2017
By Andy Adams
Teaching 600 new wake board riders this year.
Located on the east side of Highway 48 just north of the Mount Albert Road, Rail Yard Wake Park will have close to 100 campers this summer, and 500+ occasional visitors who will all learn how to ride a wakeboard at this facility, conveniently located 35 minutes from highways #401 and #404.
You may recall the feature article we published in the October 2016 edition of Boating Industry Canada magazine. In the story, we pointed out that the instructors at Rail Yard Wake Park enjoy a 95% success rate training and getting novice riders upon a wakeboard for their first time.
The cable towing system makes it a lot easier than behind a boat and their experienced cable “drivers” know just how to deliver a speed adjustment or a little extra pull to keep a novice rider up and going.
The park also has a number of water features so people can learn how to do tricks to really make it a more rewarding experience.
This year, the business continues to be very successful and they are introducing a new bi-level start a pool, so riders can begin at one level and jump down a few feet to the main lake, and then jump back up again into the pool where they can hand off to the next rider. It will be a very cool edition to the already excellent facility.
Rail Yard Wake Park is the first Canadian park to have been invited by the World Wake Association to hold their Points Chase Series there and 30 top competitors, some as young as seven years old and others as old as 40, turned out to compete. It was a better showing than many of the American parks get in the series.
This is their fifth season and Rail Yard Wake Park now has some 1500 regular customers coming to wakeboard with them every season.
That’s a lot of knowledgeable wakeboard riders who would now be prime candidates to buy their own towboat.
We asked Christine Benns about wake surfing and she was quite convinced that a wake border would find wake surfing attractive, but that would not replace wake boarding which she views as a separate and different activity.
In the marine business, tow sports boats continue to be a hot market segment and there are now lots of wakeboard boats on lakes all over Canada. Our point is that people are a lot more likely to buy a boat from you if they have already tried and been successful at wakeboarding.
So, we asked if any marinas or boat dealers had contacted Rail Yard Wake Park to connect with their riders. The answer is no – not yet at least.
Missed opportunity I’d say!
Visit: www.RailYardWakePark.com
