Flip Side Watersports devastated by tornado damage

Since opening in 2014, Flip Side Watersports is a small, family-owned seasonal outdoor business inside Oak Mountain State Park, offering boatless wakeboarding pulled by an overhead cable system, an inflatable aqua park, vessel rentals, lite fishing bait/tackle, concessions and equipment.

After the COVID-19 pandemic began last March, Jeremy Talbot had to shut down after only being open two or three weeks prior and didn’t reopen until May. 

A couple of weeks ago, he had just reopened the cable park, which teaches people to waterski using cable systems instead of boats, for the 2021 season when the unexpected happened. 

“I messed up when I told my mom that we can survive anything after COVID,” Talbot said.

What he wasn’t expecting was an (EF-3) tornado to touch down in Oak Mountain State Park on March 25 and almost demolish his entire business. 

“When it came off U.S. 119, it lifted up and landed inside OMSP and where it landed was on our boat launch,” he said. “It was like somebody put a bulldozer there and put the blade down and leveled everything. It traveled in-between the proshop and the cables. The towers are still standing and the cable control room is still there, but the aqua park room and pavilions are gone. The proshop is missing windows but still standing.”

Two trees fell on the main building, but fortunately, no one was on-site at the time. 

All of the company's profits from the previous season were used during the off-season for repairs to facilities and to expand the vessel fleet, which was entirely destroyed.

After learning that their insurance policy would not be covering any of the damage sustained by the tornado, Talbot realized that he was going to have to accept help from others, and a GoFundMe campaign was started set at 25,000, which Talbot said will get them to full capacity to be able to open Memorial Day weekend.

“What we do is very specialized as far as insurance policies go,” he said. “Our equipment is very tough and since the park owns the property, we didn't have property damage insurance because the park is able to rebuild.” 

Although the park will take care of necessary repairs to the pro shop and pavilions, Talbot is responsible for all other equipment repairs and replacement. The money raised from GoFundMe will be used to replace two prefabricated buildings that house the electronic equipment for the cable system; aqua park life vests and equipment; the entire vessel fleet (6 canoes, 10 paddleboards and 12 kayaks) along with storage racks and an equipment trailer.  

Repairs also need to be made to the cable for our standard cable course and all the features on both courses.

As of March 31, $16,743 had already been raised. Talbot said any funds received over the goal will be donated at the end of our annual charity event in October.

“Anything we take in over that amount we plan to donate back out because we’ve been fortunate. The wakeboarding industry has answered our call for help. A lot of people are sharing the GoFundMe page, but it’s still one of those deals where we will need every dime. Normally all money I’ve just spent, I can start recouping but I can't while we are closed. We are bottomed out.” 

While rebuilding, Talbot will continue working his full-time job at Skier’s Marine in Westover where he works as a boat salesman and looks forward to reopening Flip Side Watersports as soon as possible. 

He will be posting the progress on social media so people can keep up with how things are going and when they will reopen.

“I’m determined at this point we can do it, we just need that extra push,” he said.

Find Flip Side Watersports online at flipsideal.com and on Facebook and Instagram at @flipsidewatersports. Their GoFundMe account can be found at  www.gofundme.com/f/flip-side-watersports-tornado-recovery.