December 16, 2005
Master Craft X-15: Their Finest Wake Boat for 2006?
I am trying so hard to give you the no-spin opinion here on the release of the Master Craft X15. But I'm having trouble. Look at the thing! Master Craft is listening to what wakeboarders want, 
it would appear, and they did so many things right with the X-15. It is almost a little bit scary to see because I wonder what is next except a bigger model. It is almost as if they looked at every other large V-Drive wake boat, superimposed each image on top of each other, normalized the views, and crafted the design to be a nearly perfectly apportioned wakeboard boat based exclusively on current designs. It dosen't reinvent the wheel or try to make us change how we interact with the boats. It is just a big, well-designed craft. I can't confirm this but I think it is is 22 feet, but 25 overall with the teak platform and has a 100 inch beam. It is WIDE. And with the engine pushed that far back, the interior opens up quite a bit despite losing some storage space in the rear lockers.
My initial impression: What is this thing?
I'm pretty familiar with Master Craft's product line and always have been. I consider the ProStar 205, which became the fist-gen X-Star to be still one of the best hulls ever made for wakeboarding. Everything has gotten completely confusing and even now I am not sure that I fully understand where this boat is supposed to fit in their lineup, what it replaces, what if anything is still bigger (aside from the X-80) and so on. When I saw the changes for 2006, I said "Eehhh?". Is that the old X-2 (v-drive ProStar 205) hull? Is it a non-picklefork X-45? I thought... wait is it a modified X-10 or X-30? They confused a lot of people with that whole numbering/renaming scheme, not only because it made absolutely NO sense, but specifically because the X-2 becoming the X-Star and then the X-2 becoming a pickle-forked new model confused people about what really was their true top wakeboarding boat. The X-Star is not it, and stopped being it when the new pickle-forked bow/hull was introduced in 2003. So, trying to see through their Marketing is difficult and leads me to believe that they must not care much about model recognition, and work solely on brand recognition. MasterCraft makes one of the best wake boats available today - lately it is just hard to figure out which one it is! There really is no other way to look at this boat; it is their top wake boat, for hardcore riders.
Interior
Huge, open and simple. Do you need to know anything more? True wraparound seating. Simple gorgeous tower. It is both spartan and amazing at the same time. All the things one would expect to see on a wake boat are here, minus the hinges, gates, garbage bins *cough*, aluminum armband tatoo-inspired flipup items, chrome, billet plates, 1200 watt tower speakers and other unneeded things. They made the cockpit about as clean as that of the Correct Craft Super Sport's - and they made it bigger.
Gunwales/Freeboard
This deserves to be pointed out. Weighted with 3000 lbs I bet this thing still won't take water over the bow when turning around to pick up a fallen rider. Awesome. Look at it running at speed. She looks so proud!
Graphics
No batman symbol. No tribal tattoo. No razor blade. No hurricane. No techno font. Do you want me to stop? Did anyone even like that crap anyway? I can not wait to see the end of the "Xtreme!" era of wake boat graphics, and MasterCraft is ushering in a great trend with this boat and the rest of their 2006 line. And yet some 2006 model year boats, even from them, are rolling out of their factory emblemed with foolish, forced, and dated graphics. Let us not forget that it was indeed Master Craft that produced this absolute abomination not very long ago. I think the industry is now, almost, finally, over the flashy boat thing. I know consumers are.
Conclusion
Nice boat.
Posted by erik
