Nautique Unveils the G23 Paragon

By Alliance • 5 years ago • Wakeboard, News, Wakesurf

“Plus … and I must be honest here, I love driving it. It is so choice! If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.” – Ferris Bueller

Ferris Bueller took a day off from high school in the pursuit of one amazing day, sampling the finer things in life, like driving his buddy’s dad’s ultra rare vintage Ferrari, which is the origin of the quote above. Monday was a bit of this day for me and this quote essentially sums up the new G23 Paragon from Nautique perfectly. Full disclosure, this boat starts at $265,000, but … if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

I get to go to a lot of boat and product releases, some like this one are amazing, others, a little more meh. Being 25 years in this industry, I approach a lot of these events with a bit of skepticism. The images of John Akerman on a chest high wall of water that were pushed out on Saturday were definitely intriguing. They also were met with instant nay saying from the gallery, and to be fair I had my own questions.

When I first walked down the dock, the G23 Paragon was out on the water. In the distance I could see the wake, it looked big but I could not really get a feel for it. That only worked to build anticipation. Throw in a G23 with a Yanmar Marine diesel engine and GS22 Electric tied to the dock and it was a lot to try to digest in that moment.

Personally, I’m not much for long introductions and tech talk, I would much rather just get in the boat and get to it. Patiently I sat through the info offered by their lead R&D and design team Steve Carlton and Eric Miller. To their credit, they did an amazing job both with the intro and the boat as a whole. There was a ton of info offered here, I will summarize it for you in one sentence – If it is on this boat, it has been carefully considered, designed, engineered, placed and coated in a very nice finish. That goes for everything. If I were to list all of the technology and all of the bells and whistles, it would take all day. That being said here is a short list of my favorite features:

Telescoping Flight Control Tower by Roswell Marine – The telescoping tower is all-time and it comes as part of the package, not as an option. The ability to drop it low and ride stealth and covered is very cool.

Stereo – Attached to the telescoping tower are two of the biggest tower speakers I have ever seen. The boat has four sound zones, 4×12 inch subwoofers in ported enclosures and all the speakers you would ever need to blow out your entire lake.

Windshield – Yes, the windshield. Many of these make it hard for the driver to just reach out and hold onto the dock. They notched this nicely to make this easier and more functional.

Glass Dash – The driver can essentially control every aspect of the wave and riding environment and the in-boat environment with a touch of the screen.

Acronyms – There is so much tech and design in this boat that it likely sets the record for the most acronyms used to define design characteristics.

Needless to say from the images and videos, the riders killed it and the wake for both wakesurfing and wakeboarding was huge, the biggest I have ever seen firsthand. I would say the wakesurfing wave has true “meat” to it and on the highest setting, I would say it’s going to be too much for most riders to handle. The key endorsement for me though, was when Noah Flegel went out to wakeboard for the first time. Noah had been wakesurfing behind the boat all day, but had not ridden his wakeboard behind the boat just yet. After his first fall, as we came around to pick him up, he said, “Holy crap, that is not a G23 wake, this boat is going to change wakeboarding again. I can see triples going down wake to wake.”

In summary – It’s the biggest and best wakesurfing and wakeboarding wake I have ever seen. It’s expensive, it’s very well thought out, it is infused with cool technology, and it’s really really nice.

Get to your dealer or to a boat show or wherever you can to see one in person.

Nautique Boats

Bill McCaffray

“Holy crap, that is not a G23 wake. This boat is going to change wakeboarding again. I can see triples going down wake to wake.”