2011 Ronix Ibex Board

Hey, what up? I'm Parkes Bonafay, professional wakeboarder and proud owner of a company called Ronex Wakeboards. I've been fortunate enough to work with a lot of different companies that make a lot of different varieties of boards and now riding for Ronex and being a part owner of Ronex, it changes the game the way you think about and the way you actually like break down the product and like go about designing it from a marketing standpoint to production. Seems like it's almost like my baby like now. It seems like I care so much about all the boards in the line, just not mine where in the past you care about just like your boot and board and that was it. It just, being part owner in a company, it just changes the way you really think about it and it makes it a lot more gratifying when it all turns out as good as it did in 2011 this year so it's getting better and better. So I've been wakeboarding for about 15 years and I was fortunate enough to get into the sport of wakeboarding when it was just an infant. I kind of got to see the sport and the product change as the ropes got bigger, as the wakes got bigger, the ropes got higher. You notice that the boards get wider and what that is is because the wakes get steeper so you're not coming in with so much cut and angle at the wake. You're actually using the steepness and the girth of the wake to to do more tricks which is why I personally like the board with the most surface area on it. It has the widest tip and tail, the widest belly and I think overall that's the way the wakes are going nowadays. That's the the way you're going to benefit your riding. I've kind of been synonymous in the past for having a very aggressive style and very aggressive boards. With Ronex I've really wanted to take the features of boards of things that I've liked in the past and tone them down. You get a lot more forgiveness with this beveled rail to the belly and having a wide tip and tail definitely makes it more stable when you're learning advanced tricks to just beginning and getting up. My board actually has 864 square inches of surface area. That's about 10% more than any other board in the Ronex line so the more surface area you have the better it is for your riding for sure. With a wide tip and tail on a three-stage rocker it's going to have a bigger sweet spot as you come off the wake so you really don't have to come in with as much speed and aggressiveness as you typically would on a continuous narrow kind of board. You can come in, flatten off and it's going to give you the vertical kick that you want when you hit the wake. With my 2011 Ibex one thing I ultimately wanted to get is a board that has two different things. I wanted it to feel loose when I was riding flat on the water to give you more forgiveness when you're doing butter slides or when you're coming up short on a trick but then I also wanted a rail in the back where you can lean on it and really have a lot of bite when you're coming into the wake. So to get those two things I put a beveled rail through the belly so when you're riding flat on the water you get more of a looseness kind of forgiveness riding higher on the water but then when you put it on edge you sit from about the last 14 inches of your rail which is why it goes from this bevel right into a really thinned out rail through the tail which is really what you sit on and you can really cut as hard as you want on that. So you get two things you get a good bite coming into the wake when you need it and then you get a lot of forgiveness when you're riding flat doing your butter slides. I'm sure most of y'all know and if you don't Herb O'Brien pretty much is he designs all the product for Ronix. Now with Ronix we actually have a ModPore foam which is the lightest most stiffest foam that you can get and the benefits we get from that is having a board that we can make a lot thinner than we have in the past. So not only do we have the best foam with the ModPore foam but we also have a carbon that we lay into the foam which really gives you a stiffness that maintains the shape of your board. Whatever that shape may be whether it's continuous or three stage over time as you hit the wake as it sits in the sun and it's in the water they can tend to go flat with the carbon it maintains the life of your board and keeps that energy that you initially had when you first bought it so what you need that's what you get. So the widest stance on my board is 28 inches wide it's a wide but it really feels really stable so if you're into like cables really having a wide stance it gives you a lot of stability when you're on rails and just riding on wake and grabbing your board it really overall makes it feel better having a little bit wider stance. I'm really pumped on my graphic this year. One of my favorite things is my actual DNA pattern that I have on the bottom of my board. We did a contest for Red Bull called Red Bull Wake Lab and before the contest started they swallowed my mouth and they actually gave me a printup of what my DNA looks like. So with Ronix I was like I think that's a perfect combination of what I need to do and actually I already have my DNA printed up so this is actually my DNA on my doohickey on my board. So in 2011 not only is there the Ibex there's the Ibex ATR all-terrain ride. All-terrain means that we have a centered base on the bottom which really makes it a lot more durable on rails but also maintaining the speed. Like a lot of boards they have different types of bottoms that could change the way it grips on certain types of materials or rails. So with this you get a really good glide maintain and it's a durability at the same time. So another addition that comes with the Ibex ATR edition is the fin option. We have regular fins that come on the regular Ibex for the boat riders out there that want a good bite so they can grip and we also have a slider fin. Slightly wider doesn't really get hung up on rails at all and it also has when you ride on the water it also has more of a loosery kind of like snowboard kind of feel. So if you like a board that's a little bit looser a little bit more forgiveness then you could ride the board with the slider fins. So the regular Ibex 2011 comes murdered out black. One thing I like about the ATR boards is that they come with a different kind of graphic on it usually a different color switch up. Mine, bright orange on the bottom running them with the bulls and it's true. This board actually looks as good as my mustache.