I Drove Arc's Electric Wake Boat in Long Beach Harbor and It Ruined Gas Boats for MeThe first thing you notice about Arc's electric wake boat is what you don't notice. No cold-start rumble. No cloud of exhaust drifting back over the swim platform while everyone waits to shove off. I stepped aboard in Long Beach Harbor and instantly fell in love with their awesome CA-produced EV boat.Arc SportKyle EdwardInstant Torque, and a Boat That Actually TurnsWake boats are heavy by design. The Arc Sport is a 23-footer with a dry weight around 6,900 pounds, and it gets substantially heavier once the ballast tanks fill. Physics says a boat like that should feel like it needs a moment to think about your throttle input.Arc SportKyle EdwardIt does not. There is no shift clunk, no lag while a V8 climbs its powerband. You push the throttle and the boat simply goes, the way an EV pulls off a stoplight, except you're being pushed through water instead of over asphalt. Arc quotes 500 horsepower and claims more than double the torque (@ 1,932 lb-ft) of a comparable premium gas wake boat, and that number is easy to believe from the driver's seat.Arc SportKyle EdwardWhat surprised me more was the maneuverability. It's smooth in a way that flatters an amateur. I'm not going to pretend I was doing anything special, but the boat tracked exactly where I pointed it, held its line through its own wake, and never felt like it was arguing with me.The Tech Is the Real SellI came in expecting the electric powertrain to be the headline. It isn't. What got me is how deep Arc has gone on the software and hardware around it.AdvertisementAdvertisementThere are cameras on board, including a view for spotting your rider, and the boat records your day so the kids can watch their own attempts on the screen before you've even docked. The helm runs on a proper touchscreen instead of a dash full of mismatched aftermarket gauges. The hardtop tower retracts at the press of a button, which matters more than it sounds like it should when you're navigating a marina. And the boat receives over-the-air updates, so the thing in your slip gets better while you sleep.Arc SportKyle EdwardThen there are the bow and stern thrusters. Docking a nine-thousand-pound boat in a crowded harbor is normally the most stressful ninety seconds of anyone's day. With thrusters, it's a couple of nudges. Boring, in the best possible sense.A Delta Kid Who Never Left the WaterRiding along with Arc CEO Mitch Lee explains a lot about why the boat is built this way.Lee grew up in a Bay Area family of boating obsessives, spending summer weekends on his family's gas ski boat. He founded Arc in Los Angeles in 2021 with CTO Ryan Cook, a fellow engineer, and the first product was the limited-run Arc One before the company turned to wake sports.AdvertisementAdvertisementHis pitch to me, roughly, was that going electric takes the headaches out of boating: the refueling runs, the fumes hanging over the water, the noise. He has a family of his own now, and you can hear that in how he talks about it. The pitch isn't about carbon math. It's about removing the friction between a Saturday morning and actually being on the water with the people you like.Arc SportKyle EdwardWhat It CostsThe Arc Sport starts around $268,000, which puts it in the same conversation as a loaded Nautique or Malibu. It seats up to 15, runs for four to six hours on a charge with heavy use at near-max speeds, and charges overnight on the same Level 2 setup you'd use for an EV in your garage. A Level 3 fast charger gets you to 80 percent in roughly 45 minutes.Whether that math works for you depends on your dock, your driveway, and your tolerance for six-figure toys. But after a morning in Long Beach harbor, I understand the appeal completely.This story was originally published by Men's Journal on Aug 27, 2026, where it first appeared in the Gear section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.