Course Permit Approved. (Now to keep it Straight)

[m_pags]

In early July our Lake Association voted unanimously to approve my request for a course permit. I was shocked and thrilled.

There were lots of questions but nothing negative.

 

Last summer I purchased an EZ-Slalom portable course. But with out a permit we would put it and take out the same day. The course stayed pretty straight all day.

 

Now I have installed the same course and left it in. For the first couple of weeks everything stayed lined up. But now I'm having Boat Guide problems. The guide opposite the turn ball is floating loose, sometimes wide sometimes narrow. I do tighten the anchors each week. Ed told me that the foam in the arms would water log and cause it to bow down slightly. That appears to be the problem.

 

Any suggestions on how to fix this, outside of taking the course out?

 

Thanks,

Mark Pagnac

 

 

[klindy]

Adding to what @DaveLemons said, with an old Accu-Float course we also put sub buoys on the arm itself like Dave mentioned. We used a short cord to the buoy. For our purposes we used a gallon milk jug and filled it half full of water. It didn't take much to keep the arm neutrally buoyant.

[MattP]

@m_pags congrats! Thats a win for sure! Where are you located in the country?

[MillerTime38]

@m_pags put some weight on pvc where the boat guide connects to pvc. @mjump puts a small brick attached to the pvc and it works perfect

[Razorskier1]

Yep. The arms are sagging, pulling one gate down and floating the other.

[6balls]

Which coincidentally makes for an easier course too cuz it's narrow when the arms sag.

[m_pags]

Thanks for the feed back.

@MattP I'm on Big Elbow Lake in northern MN about 20 miles West of the Mississippi River Headwaters. The course is located close to the boat landing, which isn't used much thankfully.

@DaveLemons I like that idea but I'm only approved for 22 buoys.

@klindy can I attach the sub almost right to the arm to avoid having them get into a prop?

@MillerTime38 if I add weight will it straighten the arm or just sink the boat guide in place and still ski narrow like @6balls said (no wonder why I'm getting better)?

[Zman]

A couple things. Being the portable version of Ed's course, the plastic pipes are likely the very thin wall PVC. Not as stiff as standard, or schedule 40 PVC. Should still be able to make it work. Ed's permanent courses, he recommends using a 4 foot section of same diameter PVC, glue end caps on them to trap the air, then strap one to each turn ball arm about mid-way between the turn ball and the closest boat guide. Use 3 long wire ties to connect each one. This will take out the sag without going too far the other way.

Make sure all buoy anchor lines are close to the same length.

Also, I highly recommend you get Wally Buoys for your turn balls, inflate them only partially, still very wrinkled. And, hang a 3 pound weight on the end of each PVC turn buoy arm. This will pull the Wally buoy down so only half the buoy is exposed, ideally a little less than half. The part of the Wally buoy underwater will be wrinkled, which is what you want for a floating course. Very soft if you hit one. If you can splurge,get Wallys for the gates as well, but not needed. They do last many years.

If you plan to leave it in year round, you may eventually want to go with schedule 40 PVC.

 

Good luck!

 

[bigskieridaho]

I thought @DaveLemons just used the big cow pies floating to keep them in place. Ha ha

[Edbrazil]

Putting another buoy on the arm can make for a mini-course for kids & beginners.

[UWSkier]

Can you find some closed-cell foam that won't waterlog over time and stick that into the arm sections instead?

[RAWSki]

I like the suggestion of the capped PVC sections, a cheaper approach my be to buy some inexpensive swim 'noodles' and zip tie one to the arm until you get a level boom.

Once you determine the amount of float needed cut and install the rest --- then ski!

[mwetskier]

no one has mentioned this -in fact they may not even know it -but there is no such thing as a truly *straight* arm on a floating slalom course. what i mean is every multi piece plastic pipe arm will have a bow in some direction or another which you could easily detect if you could sight straight down the arm. so the secret to getting accurate buoys is not trying to chase the impossible fantasy of a straight arm -the secret is to use the bend in each arm to your advantage.

if we call top dead center 0 degrees and bottom dead center is 180 degrees you want the bow to be at one of those two locations. the way to get this is to have a mid arm buoy with a line thats either a little bit too short or a little bit too long. if its too short the arm will bow up toward 0 degrees and if its too long the arm will bow down toward 180 degrees but either way that bow will be the dominant force on the arm. this bow reduces the tendency of the arm to bow in any other direction which results in each skier ball being at or very close to the correct location.

note that this bow will require you to adjust your boat guide buoy lines a bit so they float right but just accept the fact theres no such thing as a dead straight flexible cylinder especially one thats over 40 feet long -and address that fact accordingly.

[LeonL]

@mwetskier is correct. You can't get PVC perfectly bow free. We use 3" schedule 40 on our course with 48" X 3" capped sections between guide buoy and turn ball. Deflection is minimum. It surveyed out within record capable tolerances.

[mwetskier]

@LeonL -i didn't want to confuse the concept by mentioning fully immersed floats but if you do use a method like yours or ez slaloms you will almost automatically have your bow either top dead center or bottom dead center due to the impossibility of making sealed float tubes that are a perfect balance. thats actually a good thing because as i mentioned above you want your dominant bow to be either up or down, not sideways.

[m_pags]

I'm going to try the Capped PVC method that @Zman mentioned. If I'm correct the foam inside the arm is the same as a "Noddle" so I am afraid it would just become water logged as well.

 

I do understand that the PVC arms will never be perfectly straight but right now the Boat Guides vary from 6' - 12' wide and it changes with each pass. My wife/driver loves the wide ones and hates the narrow ones, but she hasn't clipped one off yet.

 

Thanks again for all the comments. I will report back on Monday as to how the repair worked out.

[DaveD]

If you don't have to pull it out on a regular basis, you might be better off with a temporary fix to get your through the rest of the season and then install permanent anchors and subs over the winter when the lake freezes.

[04196]

@m_pags a couple of things - Depending on water depth I would hesitate tying a weight to the turn buoy end if you're on public water, as I am, since we loose several turn buoys a year to the "wallys". If a ball gets cut the arm will sink, especially without intermediate balls, and be a pain to get up to re-attach another ball. To keep the arms straight(er), I ran cable from the end of the turn arm back to the main line at equal lengths and distances in a "V" (one each direction back to the main line @ a 40 or so degree angle) to keep the arm straight. Works quite well but yes takes a lot of extra line and some diving to accomplish but end result is straight arms that also are not effected by wind. We have the intermediate balls so no sagging issues but the capped extra section of PVC sounds like a great idea.

[m_pags]

@DaveD that's exactly what I hope to do but I need to check with the DNR first.

@04196 thanks for the tips. With the capped PVC do you think the arm will still sink if a buoy is cut?

[04196]

@m_pags It may not sink without a weight attached to the end. If it did sink, I bet it wouldn't go under very far and much easier to snag and bring back up. I'm just thinking you may have to play around with the length of the capped PVC because too much, with a buoy on the end, you'll be floating the whole arm too close to the surface. If we loose both buoys on an arm, the PVC sinks and is quite difficult to swing back up so I'm going to try the capped PVC as sort of a "sub" buoy to keep the arm somewhat buoyant in that situation without putting too much buoyancy on the arm. Great suggestion @Zman

[skierjp]

Get a Accufloat from Suyderhound and be done with it. One key point is to use LONG anchor lines. I'm in 15 to 18 feet of water and my anchor lines are 200' long! One end has a worm gear hand winch to tighten the course. I had the anchor lines made from Suyderhound out of the same cable as the course. This course is so tight you can barely pull the cable to the surface. We use a 4' screw anchor on each end for the anchors. Once you have it adjusted you will never touch it again.

We live in Florida now but when we lived up north we did the same thing. Also, we never removed the course in the winter. We just pulled all the buoys off and let it sink to the bottom. We put 2 marker buoys on it so we could find it in the spring. This was on a river that would be flooded most of the winter and has frozen a few times that I remember.

One piece of advice. Do not go CHEAP. If you do you'll end up working on your course instead of skiing it. To do it right you'll have just under 2k invested in everything.

On my lake in Florida we have 2 Accufloat courses and 2 surveyed record capability courses and no one can tell the difference.

 

 

[Zman]

@m_pags Don't worry about precision on the length of the capped pipes for flotation. I'm pretty sure Ed from EZ Slalom has instructions that call for 4 foot length. When making all my arms for my course, I had leftover 3-1/2 foot pieces, and used those. Worked perfect. Note that strapping these to your existing arms at about mid span also adds some rigidity right where the arm wants to flex the most. So, if 48 inches works, and 42 inches works, there's your tolerance. Anything in between will fix you up.

If you don't want to add the 3 lb. weights to pull down your turn balls on deep, public water, I understand. But, if you use underinflated Wally buoys, this will still work. Put in as little air as possible that still gives you a half buoy dome about the water surface. The more wrinkled it is under the surface, the better. For safety, you want a soft buoy.

Happy skiing!

[m_pags]

So I did the repairs and got the sag out of the arms but had to go with plan B. The capped 2" PVC added to much flotation. I tried shortening them but ran out of caps. 30 inches was still to much. So I zip tied 8" of small noodle midway to the arm. I also added a 20 oz. water bottle filled with sand and water to each arm directly under the turn ball. Worked beautiful. Before

After

 

 

[LeonL]

@04196 how deep is your course? I would have to think pretty deep, otherwise a weird fall in the wrong place could put the skier in contact with the 40 degree cables.

[WBLskier]

capped pvc works great. I also fill the skier buoys 1/2 with water. then no weights are needed and they sit at the perfect height and easily bob out of the way when hit. We almost never lose skier buoys on a big public lake. I've considered filling all of the buoys with water for this reason.

[04196]

@LeonL - our course is around 6' - 7' under the surface, lake is 12' to 15' in depth through the location of the course.