Night tournament

[clemsondave]

Hosting my first day/night tournament today. 2 rounds in the daylight starting at 4pm. Then having a cookout. While everyone is eating, we'll be putting on my experimental lighted buoys. 3rd round in the dark. We may just make it a fun round. Crossing my fingers that everything works. I'll take some pictures and post tomorrow how it goes.

[skidawg]

Sweet, I have thought about this as well, whisper me about ur nite bouys, I would hate to spend my kids college money on dave's setup if there was a cheaper alternative

[clemsondave]

Wow, it was amazing! I was very nervous, but they worked incredible! They buoys lit up very bright and we did not have a single failure. We tried to take pictures, but I doubt any will come out. There was only a sliver of the moon, so it was really dark out.

 

We hung glow stick necklaces on the skiers. That turned into a fashion show with kids and adults taping glow sticks to their skis, vests, handles, ankles, etc. It was so dark, all you could see was these floating glow sticks zip across the wakes. You would be amazed how much you could tell just by watching the necklace vs the stick on the ski. Gates were easier to tell in the dark than in the daylight. Turn balls were easy to judge as well. But you could also see how their form was just based on the glow sticks. Couldn't see their body at all.

 

We ran it as a fun round as I was worried someone would push it and get hurt. We recommended everyone slow the boat down, not worry about the gates and gave everyone 4 passes. We lit the line up buoys and put in lit drop area buoys as well. All the buoys were so bright, it looked like a runway.

 

Design

We found a killer deal at Home Depot. They have 10 small (1"x3.5") LED flashlights with batteries for $8.

Put each one of them in a quart size zip lock freezer bag. Don't use cheap bags.

Cut a float noodle thing a little smaller than the flashlight (apx 3").

Drill a hole in the middle of the noodle, with a hole saw, a little smaller than the flashlight.

Put flashlight in zip lock bag, trying to get all the air out so it doesn't float sideways.

Insert flashlight/bag into the noodle.

 

 

Turn balls, gates and 55m

Duct tape or zip tie 4 of these noodle/lights together into a square with a 4" piece of 1"PVC.

Run the buoy line through the PVC.

Orange buoys worked way better than red. Green would not light up at all, so we replaced one 55m with orange.

 

 

Boat guides and line up buoys

Yellow buoys light up very easy and they don't need to be as bright as the skier buoys.

Use two zip ties and put just one of the noodle/light just under the boat guides

 

 

I had made up an aluminum cylinder for the skier buoy noodle/lights, but some of the cylinders sank while the noodle/flashlight stayed in place. I'll leave the cylinders off next time.

 

Cost? About $5 for the skier buoys, $1 for the boat guides (plus the cost of the buoys). Hopefully, there will be someone else on the forum that was there and can talk about it.