Everyone has an idea of the perfect time to be out on the water. For some, it's just as the sun starts to peek over the horizon, and it can seem as though you're the only person in the world. For others, there's nothing better than watching that same sun settle and fade as the heat of the day moves to the cool of the night. Some like high noon, when a dive off the swim platform lets you escape the blistering heat. Then there are those for whom the best possible time to get out on the water is in those amazing few hours that immediately follow the passing of an early summer cold front, when sudden thunderstorms have washed the sky clean and beaten back, just for a moment, the swelter. There's still an unsettledness in the air, but the sky's never so blue and the water's never so special. That's when you want to gather up your friends and your wakeboards and get out on a boat like MasterCraft's new X-Star, a boat with a design as charged as the post-storm atmosphere.

MasterCraft's been synonymous with watersports since Rob Shirley founded the company back in the 1960s, and over the past few years MasterCraft's X-series fleet of wakeboard boats has continually been at the forefront of design and performance innovation. As a result, the X-Star, the newest of the X-series, has been one of the most anticipated models in MasterCraft history. So when Clayton Raven calls from BoatTown in Austin, Texas, offering a day out on one of the first X-Stars to roll off the production line, there's no hesitation ' you're out the door and on your way even before Clayton hangs up the phone.

The timing couldn't be more perfect. Just after dawn, the latest in a four-day series of huge squall lines roars through central Texas, dumping rain and hail and bringing fierce gusts that feel just this side of tornadic. For a couple of hours it's as if you're in the middle of a Fourth of July fireworks display, with lightning flashing all around accompanied by earsplitting thunder. And then it's gone, and the skies clear to a perfect blue, even though you can still almost taste the electricity the lightning left behind as you climb into the X-Star and idle away from the launch ramp.

Most boats have a feature that leaps right out at you, but the X-Star has several competing for your attention. There's the radical tower, so heavy-duty that it feels as if it would easily support the entire Dallas Cowboys offensive line, and so hardcore in its design that it seems to have leapt right out of a graffiti artist's imagination. Getting to and from the launch ramp, the tower folds forward to fit easily beneath just about any overpass.' At the same time, the X-Star's pickle-fork bow makes it look like a steroid-fueled cross between a traditional V-drive hull and a deck boat, with the anchor locker easily doubling as a forward diving platform (there's no boarding ladder up front, though, so you can't say it really works as a forward swim platform). This pickle-fork design not only looks great, but it's also highly functional. By eliminating the traditional bow point and going with this deck-like shape, the X-Star designers have been able to open the bow seating area dramatically, so that three adults can stretch out comfortably and as many as four or five can sit up front and chat.

As a bonus, the two forward-facing lounge seats lift easily ' there's a supportive gas strut ' to give access to enormous cargo holds that run almost the entire length of the boat and are completely carpeted to boot. The X-Star's design has a hint of Cobalt when it comes to some of the more intricate design features. For instance, the folding door that secures to close off the cockpit walkthrough to keep the winds out on chilly mornings is almost identical to the one Cobalt uses on some of its models.

The cockpit itself is huge, with a U-shaped lounge setup that can seat six to eight people easily and comfortably. This is one of the benefits of the V-drive setup that really appeals to everyone from professional wakeboarders to the novice recreational inflatable fans, because it lets you bring loads of friends out with you for a day on the water, and everyone can sit and talk and watch the behind-the-boat action without having to cope with an engine box right in the middle of the cockpit.

The drawback, though, is that the 22-foot X-Star really can't be considered even a very good recreational ski boat, since that rear-mounted engine forces the hull to throw a considerable wake even if the ballast tanks are empty for more speed and there are a couple of passengers on board.

So why fight it? Fill the three built-in ballast tanks (and they're tanks, not bags), bring as many people along as possible, and leave the skis at home. After all, the X-Star is a wakeboard and recreational boat ' if you wanna ski, you really ought to be looking at the ProStars.