Axis Wakeboard Boat Forum

Well the weather finally warmed up enough to get out yesterday, though the wind was blowing like a bitch, anyway I have a few questions about the ballast system;

First of all there are four switches though there are only three tanks?
Is the center/middle tank considered the front and center both (two sections)?
Or is the front ballast switch for the PnP system?

The other thing was when we hit the fill switch you could see water pumping out the side of the boat like it was draining, what's up with that, does it pump in water like a siphon (which also pumps some out)?

How exactly can you tell if they are full and or empty?

Finally, there was water in the bottom of the boat when we got home that I had to drain, I'd guess about 5-10 gallons though it is hard to tell. When I reached my hand down to unscrew the drain plug it felt like about 3 inchces of water down there.

Thanks for any info you can share, this is the first ballast system so I feel a little stupid about it.

Heres a photo of the switches I'm talking about, and one of the boat for the hell of it, looks killer!

"Center" tank is the stock tank in the belly of the boat. "Front" is for the mushroom sack that goes in the bow.

The tanks were probably full and the water coming out the side was the overflow vent.

Check all the connections on your ballast tanks/bags if you have pnp to see if you have a leaking fitting. That seems like a lot of water. My boat rarely has any water in it.

Thanks for the suggestions, though I don't think there was water in them already.

The boat is brand new and unless they ran water in them at the factory they should have been empty. I wonder if that was water pumping out the bilge because we were running the "front" pump with no PnP bag and it was just pumpin into the hull

Are the PNP lines plugged if they are not hooked up, or could they have been pumping water into the hull?

Then my next question is for the back PnP pumps, where is the switch for them? are they the accessory switch?

If you were running the pnp pump with no bag it could have been pumping water into the hull. When I demoed our boat they had unhooked the the rear pnp bag and forgot to hook it back up, so the same thing happened - The water came out of the bilge. That would explain the water coming out of the drain.

The rear pnp bags are not on separate pumps from the tanks. Each side has a drain pump and fill for the tank and bag. So they are operated by the right and left rear switch. Depending on how you have the rear ballast set up, the pnp fills the bags first then gravity fills the hard tanks or you fill the tanks first and overflow into bags. The factory recommends filling the bags.

Thanks so much for the details, this is making some sense now. The dealer was pretty vague and the boat manual is even worse. As usual the best place to get info is from other users... like this forum!
I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it ELC

No problem!

Open your chillax seats and take a look, mine had a y connection hooking the fill, drain and overflow together for the front pnp so the boat doesn't take on water, that might explain why it was coming right out as soon as you turned it on, you need to remove the y when you install the front bag, and put on the quick connectors. Elc is right about the switches, center is the factory tank, front will be the bag, the '10 models didn't come with the front switch, it just says acc, and there isn't a light on the drain side so you have to be paying attention on that one

As far as taking on water you can have around 8" or more in the belly before the bilge will even come on, and you have to be accelerating with the bow pretty high for that to even happen, the owners manual says it's pretty normal for seepage to happen around the proppeller shaft, how much I don't know, but after 6 hours or more on the water with people getting in and out all day and life jackets dripping all over the place I usually have 6" of water or so in the belly, which seems like alot but that drain is the lowest spot in the boat and it might only be 5-10 gallons, it drains all out pretty fast with that huge plug out.

Thanks Walter, I was just under there looking for the darn lines for the front PnP bag and could not find them...now I see why. So it was the front pump just passing the water right through the fill to drain lines.

I'm glad to hear they Y'd theme together like that or it could spell dissaster if the switch was hit and left on.

Mine is a 2011, if I'm hearing you right the switch will light up on the drain side when the tank is empty?

That was my next question...how could I have got that much water in there, we didn't swamp it but I agree having 8 people crawling in and out for 6 hours can certainly slop some water.

I am surprised to hear it could seep around the shaft, if my Tige started doing that I would assume it needed repacking.

Great info., thanks for sharing.

By the way.... where are the lines for the back PnP bags, I didn't see them at first glance. I understand from elc's comments how they work...either by overflow from the hard tanks, or they gravity fill the hard tanks after they fill.