How do you know when you get a bad pull?

[Ilivetoski]

I've always wondered this, I'm sure all of the boat paths I've gotten from drivers have not been straight. But I've never had an instance where I got to the other end and said to myself "wow what a bad path", that said what will a skier experience with a less than ideal path?

[Horton]

When i ski bad it is always the drivers fault.

[Ralph Lee]

When you look back and see yellow buoys floating around

[Than_Bogan]

Very wide into one side; very narrow into the other. Tells me driver is consistently to one side.

 

But any driver willing to pull me through the course is a good driver!

[bigskieridaho]

When anyone other than my wife is pulling me.....I always ski better when she is.

[mopowpow]

When my husband is in a pissy mood, it show in his driving skills...

[Drago]

That's over 40'

[6balls]

When I'm rounding a ball and I make eye contact with the driver.

[liquid d]

@Ilivetoski if you got to the other end, it was a good path.

[thompjs]

Most skiers can't really tell. I know TFIN does, he has told me that I countered to soon on certain buoys -- and I know he was right.

[RazorRoss3]

The worst is when you can feel yourself work over the driver out of the buoy. You don't get any acceleration out of the ball because the driver is feeding you rope you don't need by letting themselves get pulled in to you. It can also hurt your next buoy because the driver will need to correct and when they are sliding with you through the pull to get back to center you don't generate the same swing to the next buoy that you would expect.

[MattP]

-When you can make eye contact with the driver in the mirror while you are rounding a buoy.

 

-When someone take a phone call while you are in the course.

 

-When you round a buouy and get uncharrorstic slack in the line and look up to see the driver with their leg on the dash.

 

-When you are rounding a buoy and feel the boat move 8" away from you.

[Onside135]

Exactly what @RazorRoss3 said....more than I want someone who can keep dead center I want a driver to hold the boat in place, even if its slightly off center. It's usually very noticeable when someone is moving the boat into you off the second wake to recover from not picking you up solid on the last ball.

[RazorRoss3]

I'm actually frequently surprised by the college kids at UT Austin. They have been my primary drivers for about a year now and I'll admit when I got here that they weren't perfect since they'd never pulled 36mph skiers much less shortliners but they've really stepped up their game. I feel like I get a solid pull from them more often than not. I can definitely feel myself pull them around if I get in trouble and get scrappy but for the most part they have given me a pretty solid pull.

[SkiJay]

I got a crap pull today @Ilivetoski, so I'm going to give you a straight answer. There are lots of ways to screw up a pull. One of my absolute pet peeves is approaching the course at an angle rather than straight in from as far before the greens as possible. I'm astounded how many good skiers figure that angling their way towards the 55 meter balls is okay so long as they split them in the middle. WRONG! The longer you can approach the course straight down the middle before arriving at the green balls the better.

 

Then when you are in the course, it's obviously bad to be too far to one side or the other. But it's even worse to correct your crappy line while the skier is cranked over fully extended to get around a ball. This either gives the skier slack when they're expecting a tight line to pull against, or a nice little surprise-tug to yank them off balance.

 

Good thing we don't have to sweat speed control too anymore!

[Razorskier1]

Almost every newbie driver will give you some bad pulls, because they don't understand how much you move the boat, nor how to hold the boat in place. I'd much rather have straight but slightly off the center than someone where I can feel myself move the boat every turn, then find no rope support at the next one.

 

In the case of experienced drivers, sometimes the pull can be stiffer than I like. Straight and centered as can be, but countering a little early and taking the handle away when you are trying to ski back to it.

 

Neither is great for my regular training (which has become quite irregular this year), but I'll take teaching somebody while skiing my first two line lengths over not skiing.

[Booze]

I generally try to move or correct only when there is load on the boat. I hope that's the right thing to do.

[FSSPCat]

If you look up and see me, it's probably not gonna be good.

[ISP6ball]

Some of these responses are classic. Very entertaining!

[ToddL]

There are two types of bad drivers:

do nothing

do a lot

Some very, very light skiers may not move the boat, so in some cases the driver can sometimes get away with just holding straight. But the worst driver is the "do a lot" driver. Over correction is a mess. Be with the skier (anticipating, not reacting), be present (supportive, not corrective). If the driver is in sync and supportive, the the boat path will stay straight and there will be no need for "corrections."

 

Building on @SkiJay 's comment about the approach - ideally the boat should be at speed and lined up well before the skier makes a move outbound for their pull out. For some skiers that is yards before the boat reaches the green buoys.

[ForrestGump]

@Mark_Matis Please take no offense to this. But if you can't make it around a buoy at 15 off, then regardless of what the driver does, it's pretty much your fault. Seriously, there is so much rope that the only way for you to be narrow is if YOU are narrow. Which probably means you were "behind" the boat. The boat could move 2 feet and you still shouldn't be narrow. Now, can the driver help and/or make it a bit mroe difficult for you? Yep! Absolutely. But at 15 off you should be able to make due with anything short of the driver driving around the buoys on the outside.

[BraceMaker]

my boat has a bad steering cable in it right now, I couldn't hold it inside the boat guides saturday, time for a refresh.

[DanE]

@BoneHead @Mark_Matis driver were running over a turn buoy.....

[LoopSki]

@bonehead , you boneheaded reading his post !

[DefectiveDave]

I hope the day comes when I have to worry about the pull.

 

My drivers are either extremely consistent (across all 3 of them) or I simply cannot tell the difference pass-to-pass with all that extra rope dangling out the back of the boat.

[Stevie Boy]

When you are in sync with the skier, not only is it easy, but it's a nice feeling, how ever if the skier is having a bad day, you have to be on the ball a bit more, if you have a skier who gets slack, leans and loads in all the wrong places, it's very hard to work with them, just keep the boat straight and be as smooth as possible.