Skurfing

Skurfing as a sport has two common uses: "water skurfing" and "street skurfing".

Water Skurfing is a form of water skiing that uses a surfboard or similar board instead of skis. The skurfer is towed behind a motorboat at planing speed with a tow rope similar to that of Knee Boarding and wakeboarding. It shares an advantage with kneeboarding in that the motorboat does not require as much speed as it does for water skiing.

Skurfing is a towsport and it is very similar to water skiing. The skurfboard, however, is a surfboard and is usually shorter by about two feet, wider and has three larger fins that make the board easier to manoeuvre while being pulled behind a boat. The planing speed of the motorboat is equivalent to the speed generated by a wave and allows the skurfer to ride behind the boat the same way a surfer would ride a wave. One of the advantages of skurfing when compared with surfing is that when the water is flat, skurfing is still possible. Skurfing can be done behind a boat or a jet ski on a river or in an ocean. The manoeuvres on a skurfboard are similar to those on a surfboard, these include.

Freeriding is when the wake is surfed without the rope. First the rider pulls themselves up the rope so that they are skurfing in the largest part of the wake. The rider then gently pumps the board to maintain speed and moves their weight further forward to help them stay on the wake wave. Once they are being propelled by the wake the rope is thrown back into the boat.

Skurfing has developed into its own unique sport but has also been used in adapting other sports such as surfing. Before skurfing was invented there were limitations to paddling onto larger waves when surfing because surfers lacked the speed needed to stay in front of the wave. Skurfing has shown the world the potential of big wave surfing by towing the surfer towards big waves. Therefore giving the surfer the speed needed to catch the wave successfully.

The early usage was a portmanteau of skiing (as in water skiing) and surfing, and was used to describe a popular surface water sport in which the participant is towed on a surfboard behind a boat with a ski rope.

Although the "Skurfer" (a branded water-sport product) was originally trademarked by a surfer named Tony Finn in the mid 1980s, the word 'Skurfing' was potentially first coined in New Zealand by surfboard shaper Allan Byrne. Allan Byrne lent a surfboard to Jeff Darby and friends in Queensland Australia who started to make their own and later came in contact with Tony Finn who was to later produce the brand Skurfer' under royalty.

...
Wikipedia