Nice shots
A loooong time ago my friends and I used to wakes surf using our real surfboards which are not really built to handle that kind of stress. One of my friends was super good at it and could jump the whole wake but would eventually snap the boards in two. Nobody wanted to let him use their board
So he got the idea to build a board that was strong enough to withstand the abuse he was dishing out. He finally came out with his first prototype which was a polyurethane shell that was injected with foam and had twin fins on the bottom.
He brought it out on the boat next time and we all tried it. Worked really well and was very versatile. You could stand up or knee board or use it to launch off to barefoot. He was a monster on it and rode like nobody else.
His next step was to get where he could mass produce them and sell them. At that same time he took some pictures I took of him to SPRAY magazine to show off his new product. Once he had did that the entire industry took notice and EVERYONE scrambled to put out their own product. The giant companies were no match for my friend and they were able to run with his idea.
His board was the first of it's kind and he called it the " Wakemaster ". That was soon followed by another company's board called the " Skurfer " and so on. From there the board evolved with foot straps, and became shorter and today they are really just trick skis but the evolution of modern wakeboarding started with my friend's quest to build a better board and it took off from there. I made a post about it here before with some of the pictures but I can't find it now.