PRINEVILLE – Everybody on the boat forgot to tell Robby Carter that we were on Prineville Reservoir, not on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

”I’m gonna hang 10,” Carter said.

Sporting board shorts and flip-flops, the 17-teen-year-old from Bend splashed into the water and pulled himself up onto the wake skate as the boat accelerated. After crossing the wake several times, he brought both his feet to the very front of the board while facing forward, smirking at us. Then he sat down.

The small crowd on the boat erupted with laughter.

After standing back up to perform several tricks and grab some air, Carter finally tired himself out and returned to the boat.

”Dude! That was sick, man! I’ve never seen that before!” exlaimed Carter’s friend Matt Coleman.

Most people have never seen wakeskating or wakesurfing before, much less a rider ”hanging 10” from the back of a boat.

Wakeskating and wakesurfing are the latest twists to wakeboarding. Wakeskating is basically the same as wakeboarding, but the rider is not strapped into boots. Instead, he or she rides the board like a skateboard (usually with shoes, but Carter forgot his). Wakesurfing takes that concept a step further, ditching the rope and allowing wake riders to feel as if they’re shredding some waves in the middle of a lake. Purist surfers would most likely call it cheating.

Shortly after his wakeskating performance, Carter switched to wakesurfing.

He pulled himself up onto the wakesurfing board – the size and shape of a surfboard but with wakeboard composition – as the boat approached its maximum speed of 10 mph, the optimum speed for wakesurfing. Riding just a few feet from the back of the boat, Carter threw the rope back into the watercraft, being pulled by the wave alone.

As he dug into the simulated wave (created by increasing the weight on one side of the boat), he performed several tricks, including ”ollies” and ”toe-side 180s.”

”It’s like a never-ending wave and you get towed into it,” said Carter, one of the top wakeboarders in Central Oregon. ”It’s the newest thing now. It’s pretty cool.”

And it’s less taxing on the body than wakeboarding. Instead of trying to jump the wake and perform technical inverted tricks, wakesurfers can relax and enjoy the endless wave, and even converse with spectators on the boat. And the crashes aren’t nearly as violent as those on a wakeboard.

”Old people like us can do it and not get killed,” said Becky Carter, Robby’s mother, speaking about herself and her husband, Bob. ”It’s easier for me than wakeboarding, and when I fall, it doesn’t hurt.”

Said the 18-year-old Coleman: ”It’s a lot more mellow. When you fall, it’s a fun fall.”

Placing most of the weight on one side of the boat creates a water curl of about 3 feet – much like an ocean wave, but lacking certain aspects that keep surfers heading to the coast.

”I just wish there was a tube you could duck down in,” Robby Carter said.

But just letting go of the rope is challenging enough. Wakesurfers must wait for that right moment when they can feel the wave carrying them along behind the boat.

”Once you feel the boat taking you, you can throw the handle,” Carter said.

Tricks are difficult to come by on a wake surfboard, so most riders perform simpler stunts such as ollies and 180s. But a back-side 360 is possible for some pros, and Carter said he has come close to landing one.

Perhaps just as impressive is another trick that Carter says he can pull: walking onto the moving boat while wakesurfing.

While we didn’t witness that stunt on this particular outing, there was some great surfing going on, including slashing, board sliding, ollies and 180s.

”Wakesurfing takes a lot more balance and a lot more weight control,” Coleman said. ”There’s no progressive edge, so the board is slick on its edge. You can’t be lazy. You have to be on all the time.”

Wakesurfing was actually discovered before wakeboarding – WAY before. About 30 years ago, surfers came up with the idea to surf behind a boat. There is a scene in the movie ”Apocalypse Now” (1979) in which characters wakesurf on a river.

With new board technology, wakesurfing has been re-discovered during the last two or three years. The discipline has even been added as a competitive event at many wakeboarding contests.

Coleman and Carter took first and second place, respectively, in wakesurfing during a World Wakeboarding Association competition in Red Bluff, Calif., in July.

One difference with wakesurfing is that it lacks the high-flying, inverted tricks of wakeboarding.

”Wakesurfing is already highly competitive, but it’s extremely boring to watch,” Coleman said. ”It’s so fun to do, but from the shore it looks so lame.”

Still, Coleman said he prefers wakesurfing to wakeboarding, and would like to purchase a new trick surfboard: a smaller, flatter board designed for tricks like ”shove-its,” during which the board does a 180 while the rider’s direction doesn’t change.

”I’ve progressed faster on a wakesurf than I have on a wakeboard,” said Coleman, who has wakeboarded for two years but just took to wakesurfing this year.

Carter, meanwhile, prefers wakeboarding above all else. The junior pro competed last weekend at the Vans Triple Crown National Championships in Indianapolis, qualifying for the WWA’s world championships in Orlando, Fla., Sept. 30-Oct. 2.

”There’s nothing more fun than boosting a huge back flip 10 feet in the flat,” Carter said.

But for those of us who can’t do that, there’s always wakesurfing.

Mark Morical can be reached at 383-0318 or mmorical@bendbulletin.com.