I'm thinking about building a new 20' Open Bow with twin outboard motors. Your thoughts?

[DynaSkiPete]

My good friend has been wanting me to build a 20' Open Bow with twin outboard motors. It just occurred to me to ask this group what your thoughts are. Yes I know many of you don't think outboards are acceptable tow boats for slalom courses and they may not be. However many water skiers like outboards. Some of them even ski the course. Many show ski parents buy an inboard when dad would really love two motors on his boat. The speed holding will be amazing without "cruise control". Nothing like the torque with two motors and two props. Acceleration will blow your mind. Yes the prop bubbles will be greater. It should be able to make big wakes with a little trim. Boat weight will be similar to smaller inboard direct drive models and the think the wake will be too. Prices should be around $70 K water ready on a trailer but could vary quite a bit due to the price differences between twin 150's and twin 300's. Your thoughts?

[disland]

Your nuts

[keithh2oskier]

Besides having the internal space with an outboard, what does something with twin 150s offer over say a slightly used Nautique 200 OB or Malibu or MC? Top speed? I cant imagine it can accelerate (with a skier) and hold speed better. But I really know nothing about outboards. My question isn't meant to be demeaning. I truly don't know as I have been around inboards all my life.

[Ilivetoski]

Why have twin 150s? Why not just 1 300? 2 engines is more cost, an extra engine to have a problem with, extra fuel, extra weight

[oldjeep]

I guess id rather have a single in something where you are not running twins to get home

[UWSkier]

How do you have a swim platform on a twin rig?

 

Don't get me wrong, the giggle factor of punching the throttle on a lightweight twin rig is off-the-charts fun, but I don't see the point of it as a ski boat really. We used to run an 18 foot outboard with a 175 Merc turning a hi-5 and the thing would literally leap out of the water on a run up to 60+ MPH. It made tiny wakes for slalom and was a great barefoot boat. Is the thought on the twin rig side just to make something that can pull stumps?

 

MIght make a sweet jump boat...

[XR6Hurricane]

A Dynaski (or Hydrodyne) with twins will easily out-accelerate a direct drive inboard. Twin 150s will pull more than a single 300 because you have more traction with the two props, plus you have all the more cubic inches. If you ever rode in a twin rig from idle to about 40 you'd think the anchor was down in any other boat.

[BraceMaker]

So I think what I'd want is to space the outboard back put a large platform in front of the engine. Then skiers can have space and hop off backwards. Hoop over engine to guide rope.

[Wish]

If you take the time and expense to do this, you have to find a shortline skier and a slalom course and prove all these inboard junky naysayers wrong. B) oh and take video with the GPS mph showing somehow.

[Chef23]

Unless you have a customer already lined up I wouldn’t do it.

 

If you are trying to sell it to slalom skiers it has to have speed control because that is what is used in tournaments. I am also interested to see how you handle the platform issue with double motors.

[Horton]

I moved this to a members-only off-topic section. I understand these boats as a super inexpensive entry-level option but otherwise it just seems like it has nothing to do with slalom or 3 event skiing.

[riplash]

I am not a serious tournament skier, but I would want speed control for this reason: Some of the people who drive for Marta and myself can't keep it within 5 mph of a the set speed. It isn't a matter of being hard to accomplish, they just don't pay attention to the speed. So easy to use speed control would be nice for just non tournament skiers. I would hate to be behind them in their cars if their cruise control breaks.

[XR6Hurricane]

I wouldn't say "super" inexpensive or "entry level." It depends on how you configure it.

 

[Horton]

@XR6Hurricane the core topic of this website is slalom skiing in 3 event skiing. The only imaginable use of one of these boats if it is super inexpensive. Otherwise anyone who is inside the intended demographic will be much better off with a direct drive boat.

[aupatking]

Twins are incredibly easy to handle. You can dock a 26 foot Regulator with two screws easier than a Prostar. That, itself, doesn’t make me want a ski version at all. Twins are more of a guarantee, that when I go out to sea, I come home, even if it’s slow. I’m not terribly concerned about survival after an engine failure out at the slalom course.

The only things that matter for skiing, to me, are:

Wake

Do the twins assist in tracking

Can the speed control be anywhere near as accurate as Zero Off

 

Oh yeah, if Mastercraft doesn’t have that hard shell bow cover on 100% patent lockdown, every boat manufacturer in the world is dumb for not doing the same.

[thager]

@aupatking Wonder if a shell bow cover could be designed to double as the bimini?

[DynaSkiPete]

Horton twin motored Hydrodynes and Crosby Outboards were the first tournament tow boats in three event tournaments. This is one of the few active web sites with lots of very active participants which is great! Feedback here is appreciated.

 

Interesting comments. Building a 20' 1" long, 84" beam boat that has had three 350 hp Mercury Verado engines on it is nuts. Two 300 motors is child's play.

 

 

 

Two motors make the boat rock solid for tracking. The fuel consumption of twin 300's would not be bad at all compared to most of the larger single inboard motors. I actually have a fuel economy meter on my outboard but that is another discussion. The twin tanks would be under the front seats helping weight distribution.

 

Addressing the boarding or swim platform is a concern but a person that wants two motors might not get the ideal for everyone platform. Frankly few if any buyers so far are concerned about the platforms we have. The slalom skiers that have purchased boats said they are surprised how well the existing platforms work out. Sit on the back of the boat, put the ski on the platform, feet in bindings and hop in. I have never tried it as I live on a lake. I am no longer able to slalom ski (spinal stenosis) and only did buoys a couple times. I was not good. We hop off the end of the dock or do a sitting start from the dock's end. I suspect most of our customers don't need platforms. Usually one platform gets a boarding ladder and one does not. Why any manufacturers don't have a boarding ladder is a mystery to me.

 

Having two motors will mean speed control is less of an issue. The speed tends to stay where you put it. Seriously. Mercury Smart Tow is very good I have been told by users and assured by Mercury. Their built in launch controls I don't think will work properly as they are likely to be way to fast of pulls for one person on a slalom ski. If anything the boat will be hard to drive for many when pulling only one person out of the water slowly. Three motors takes great finesse of the throttle controls for light ski loads. Two motors can be tough as well. Electronic controls aide this situation greatly.

 

The boat can be made to go way faster than is needed with two motors. Most of the show ski boats run into the high 40's or low 50's on the GPS. They want pulling power.

 

I don't want or need to prove any naysayers wrong. No need as they will always find something wrong with an outboard. Imagine if the tournament folks had stuck with twin outboards as they started out with them many long years ago . . . . . . . . they say history repeats itself.

[vtmecheng]

Then why did you ask BoS in the first place? You already know what people here will say. Build the boat and show us all how great it is. This is becoming a running discussion about your boats over multiple threads. Some here have offered to be pulled through the course with a Dynaski, you should take them up on the offer. Deeds not words.

[RINLE]

How would the barefoot table be?

[sunvalleylaw]

1. My first thought, having been raised on an outboard, is what about the swim step, if it is intended to be a slalom boat? Would there be an interior, elevated step in front of the motors? that could work I guess, though less convenient than a traditional swim step.

 

2. Not sure why some form of speed control couldn't be made to work somehow. Just has to be adapted to throttles on the twin outboards. Seems like some GPS system could be adapted.

 

3. With respect, I am surprised this topic had to be moved. We talk all the time about growing the sport, the sport began with outboards as pointed out, and slalom skiing is more than 3 event/tournament skiing. Moving it seems to send the wrong message to me, if we want to grow the sport. A little open-mindedness seems in order, and I don't see what discussing a different tug hurts. But, said with respect and only intended to promote reflection. Not intended to insult or start an argument.

 

4. Build it! I would love to see how it comes out!

[Wish]

I'd be interested to hear a pro skiers point of view that skied twin or single rigs back then as well as drivers that drive current boats. Chris LaPoint comes to mind. If I'm not mistaken, there were "pro tour" stops here and abroad that were pulled by MC and Flight Craft outboards even with inboards in full swing of popularity. Probably others outboards but I remember those being on TV. I think Yamaha was even a sponsor of what was then a pro tour as they were predominantly used for most jump events. Agree that to expand the sport, one needs to encourage expansion beyond buoys and only onboard boats. Just take a look at what Jennifer Lapoint is trying to do on the buoy end of things. She's spent a ton of time, money and effort to bring more skiers into the fold. She's very well respected in our industry but she will have a lot to prove to get any kind of acceptance from the slalom course purists. I don't believe that's her target audience though. Alternatives to the above seems to be more of the fat wake type sports....who wants that? I also agree that if you come to a site for knowledge and advice, perhaps taking that advice is better then openingly brushing it aside which is what it's starting to feel like.

[XR6Hurricane]

@sunvalleylaw I agree with everything you said. There is a whole world that exists outside of 3-event tournaments. I understand the core of this site and my hat is off to @Horton for maintaining that focus. However, the overwhelming majority of slalom skiers will never ski a course. I've been skiing for 23 years and was never on a course until last year, and am only able to get to it a few times per year max.

[Horton]

Gentlemen the focus of this form is three-event skiing. With that in mind we have highly evolved in boards with speed control software that gives us essentially perfect consistent results slalom pass after slalom pass. If somebody is just getting to skiing and an inboard is a much less expensive way into the sport then Dyna ski is an option.

 

For the target audience of this website it's an oddity and frankly off topic. I'm not saying it's a bad product and I'm not saying it sucks and some of you might love it but it just does not fit the focus of this forum.

 

[WIRiverRat]

I'm going to see if I can't get the local show ski team to pull me through my course with their dynaski next week (they are at the state show ski tournament this week). They have both a twin rig and a single engine dynaski. I'll report back how it goes.

 

In the meantime for what its worth I have skied behind these boats and driven these boats (2005 was the last time I show skied), and I don't think a twin rig will be a very good slalom boat. Here are my recollections from driving/skiing it (I never took one through the course or took a serious slalom run behind one).

 

The boat had tons of power, it was made to pull large acts like pyramids with 20 plus people at once. For a slalom skier this kind of acceleration is not needed. I don't know of anyone who needs more power to be pulled on a deep up from any of today's inboards. Because the boat had so much power is was actually quite difficult to dial in a speed exactly. The boat either wanted to go idle or very fast. It could have been the rigging on the boat that made it this way but pulling show ski jumpers one pass may be at 28mph and the next at 30mph.

 

The wake was small, but very wide and very steep. Add to this that the pylon is in the back of the boat instead of the center and the wake is a little wider at all line lengths because you are effectively 5ft further back on the boat.

 

Tricking was not much fun behind it. The speed seemed to vary between 15mph and 20mph because the boat was trying to plane off or fall back down. Because of the twin motors the table was very turbulent. Very steep wake made wake tricks a bit tough.

 

Back then the general consensus was if it was a big act with lots of people break out the hydrodyne, if it was something that required finesse and tight speed control use the mastercrafts.

 

I'll try to get behind one next week and report back from the slalom course. I'll bring a stop watch to have the spotter time in the speed. Hopefully I will be amazed and see a bunch of 16.95s.

[elr]

There are reasons that competitive/serious skiing moved away from outboards 40 years ago . . .. Those reasons have not changed. I don't believe that the relative price differential has changed all that much in those 40 years.

[sunvalleylaw]

Ok, I misunderstood, and thought the focus included slalom skiing in general. That portion of my comment is withdrawn. I still have questions about a swim deck, and think that is an issue, and the other stuff I said.

[Ski_Dad]

DynaSki makes great boats but i agree it's an odd topic to post here and seems more like a sales pitch. I'm a huge outboard fan having grown up on one in the 70's. We have owned many. I even considered a Mastercraft outboard boat when I was shopping. I also seriously looked at a DynaSki but at 45k for the options I wanted I could not justify it for my family. And there are literally no used DynaSkis. Hence the Malibu i own for around 20k and have no regrets.

 

My Malibu uses 1/2 the gas of my last outboard boat and the only negative I feel about DD boats is the whole backing up thing.

 

For this group most of the serious skiers would probably pull the boat around once they got into 28 or 32 off and would not be good for course skiing.

 

I'm all about growing the sport but I think most folks who want a DynaSki are going to contact them b/c they see them at the ski shows (just went to one on Wed) Oh and a single 200 hp engine would be plenty.

 

 

[RINLE]

panda me up if you want, but this is your own tagline:

 

"The digital center of the water ski world".

 

I love all things skiing other than tubes and surfboards. I never got the chance to show ski, but bet I would love this too. This is the best place on the net for my love of all skiing. I didn't realize this was slalom only focused. I tried to find where to read the rules again but I can't see that.

 

My bad if I have contributed to moving your forum off of its focus.

 

 

 

[sunvalleylaw]

One other advantage for an outboard set up, saltwater. My younger brother and I were just talking about how he wants to get me out behind his buddies outboard Mastercraft, apparently one of the only two he knows of in South Puget Sound. And my other brother for live over there, are always keeping their eyes open for outboard Mastercraft for sale if only in interest. People do set courses out in that water too. If a two motor set up helps with tracking or any of the other issues single outboards have, it seems like it worthy consideration. I think it would be nice to have another outboard boat option. I suppose with proper care person can use a direct drive in the salt water. But outboards tend to be a small boat of choice in that environment.

[ALPJr]

Sounds like a fun project if you have the funding. For me the 17' open bow with a 150hp, tracking fins, center pylon, rear facing observers seat, two transom platforms, and a removable rear seat would be better suited for slalom and other skiing enthusiasts.

[Killer]

 

 

outboards are better than inboards at towing footers long line and a ton of show skiers. That is about it IMO, and I've owned and operated many outboards and have been involved in many aspects of towed watersports from show skiing, barefooting, wakeboarding - more recently 3 event skiing (slalom). Outboards or IOs were about all you'd see in Ontario Canada through the 80s and 90s on most lakes. We had one of 2 or 3 inboards on our lake with probably 500 boats back in the mid-90s. You do see a lot more wake boats now as they are the best small lake runabout for having fun on the water: slalom, wake, surf, tube, foot, etc. Last I checked pretty tough to surf an outboard and not a lot of fun to wakeboard.

 

As popular and growth oriented show skiing is, you don't need twins to practice your swivel or barefoot runs at home... with 40k worth of motor too, defeats the purpose of a cost effective towboat.

 

for Towed watersports an inboard powered craft is choice, unequivocally.

 

I have been teaching my 3 yo to ski this year on the ez-ski - no way I could do it as easily with an outboard, if at all. Being able to get the kid to sit on the ez-ski on the platform and sit on the back of the boat talking to him as I let the rope out was immensely important. Impossible on an outboard, even if you had a platform around the back.

 

my nautique is 17 years old and cost me less than 1 motor on a dynaski... pretty simple boat to maintain too.

[BraceMaker]

@RINLE Part of his management of the site includes management of site traffic to search engines, if this becomes a lot of talk of barefooting and dual outboard show ski rigs then google will preferentially direct site traffic to ball of spray for people who are searching those terms. Which long term will just dilute the value of the site for what it is.

 

@DynaSkiPete - The only current pressure driving me to buy a new boat to replace my current one is to obtain zero off. And I have PP stargazer in my current boat. So I'm not really personally swayed by the availability of the mercury speed control, nor of the availability of a boat that doesn't require a speed control (we've covered the difference between a boat holding a rough speed and what our goals are)

 

Not that I surf but I do value the prop being under the hull as we swim off the back and sit at the sand bar quite a lot and I had a I/O and a Outboard growing up, neither were good for that activity.

[Horton]

@BraceMaker

Well stated and true.

At one end of the target demographic is anyone who simply aspires to go around buoys in slalom course. The other end of the demographic are National and Internationally competitive skiers. Everything outside that range is really off topic.

 

[Ed_Johnson]

Innovation is the Mother of all Invention !!!!

 

@DynaSkiPete ... I think it is a cool idea and would like to see it. Would probably never sell to the Tournament Crowd, but would to a lot of gear heads that want something with a really fast top end that they could ski behind. I grew up in Southern Wisconsin where show skiing was a way of life, that I was born into at 8 years old. My first boat, when I was 16 years old, was a 16' Glastron with a big Merc. that would run around 60 mph and slalom skied and barefooted behind it all the time. Loved that thing back in the 60's, just like I Love my CC200 409 right now.

 

Go For It, and make it REALLY FAST !!!

 

 

 

[DW]

@DynaSkiPete: Just a suggestion as you look to develop an outboard w/ the Merc speed control system. I would peruse this site for the ZO and Perfect Pass threads and go through them. Why, as you do, it will give you a glimpse on how incredibly anal, fussy and demanding we as slalom skiers are relative to the speed control used for 3 event skiing. Just an opinion, but an educated guess would be that the Merc system would need another level of calibration / tuning / development to be considered acceptable. Today's expectations are worlds ahead of what used to be acceptable just a few years ago.

[UWSkier]

Good example: Malibu Cruise. Since around 2006 Malibu has included standard cruise control on every boat they've sold. I don't know anyone who uses it for slalom skiing.

[escmanaze]

@DynaSkiPete I think that simply the fact that you keep saying that there is a certain amount of power or number of props that would negate the need for speed control shows what a large disconnect we have here between the insane, anal, obsessed buoy chasers that make up the majority of this site and the average recreational slalom skier like yourself.

 

Dude we are Crazy!!!!!

 

And there is no way to actually understand that crazy except for to start chasing buoys yourself. Otherwise, it is a level of crazy that is simply impossible to understand.

 

It's actually a great pleasure of mine to take some recreational skiers out to the course and watch them go from wondering why I'm so picky about stuff, to suddenly being picky themselves as soon as they have made that ski go around a few buoys a few times.

 

I just don't want you taking away from this site that we are all jerks, because we definitely can come off that way sometimes (see my comments above.) It's really not that we are jerks, in fact if you catch us away from skiing, most of us are really nice guys. It's that we have gone totally insane trying to add one more ball to our score. We are measuring our fins by the thousandth and measuring our seconds by the hundredth. So yes we come off as closed minded to outboard drive boats, but I hope you understand that it is because we have all gone crazy with obsession and we aren't actually closed minded people in general, it is just that we are looking for everything to be exactly perfect so as to give ourselves the absolute best shot possible at every last buoy.

[Wish]

I'll add that in general, my experience has been that we buoy chasers are acceptionally nice people on the water as well. We just happen to understand each other's crazy. So even responding to you @DynaSkiPete it all sounds rather normal. Case in point;

.

 

 

[bananaron]

@Horton I dont aspire to go around buoys and I am not a national or international competitive skier.I am 70yrs old who has been skiing for 60yrs and barefoot for 55yrs and have taught hundreds of people to ski,slalom and barefoot.I live to ski and have retired on a lake to enjoy as long as I can.Does this mean that I am off topic due to I am not within those parameters??

[Horton]

@bananaron you are a long time member of this community in good standing do you really want to nitpick my words like that? You are very involved with waterskiing so you are a Baller. The parameters I mentioned above are not exactly black and white but if you started posting about barefooting it would be off topic. I am not against barefooting but it is not the core topic of this forum.

 

The success of this website is largely due to the very narrow focus of the website.

[Sethro]

 

Looks like twin outboards were good enough for the 1957 MN State Tournament :)

[Horton]

@Sethro well that proves that I'm completely wrong about the whole thing

[dvskier]

Take a look at the turn balls. Looks like we went the right direction on many things.

[thager]

Must be a whopping 120 hp!!

[dvskier]

More like 70 hp.

[dave2ball]

TOO MUCH POWER. In the 80’s they used a MC with a 200hp Yamaha for jump because of the response and the torque. It will be too aggressive for slalom. Your nuts.

 

[BraceMaker]

If some one can truly crack the awesome ski wake but holds 6 people and can be ballasted enough for surfing I think dealers could sell the hell out of those.

 

Or in reference to my above comments about extended platforms. Could there be a way to have a removable platform system which had running surface and wake shaping? Like could you reinforce the stern of a prostar and have a swappable platform that has a displacement to it and ballast and a suck gate and then pull surfers? Then dump it at the dock not in use.

[vtmecheng]

@BraceMaker, it's illegal to surf behind anything but an inboard (or one of those Volvo forward drive things but that's a gray area). Outboards and IOs are not permitted for safety. That limits the use of an outboard for a multi-purpose boat these days. Though I wish wake surfing was all together illegal but that's for another thread.

[BraceMaker]

@vtmecheng illegal or just stupid?

 

If you had an outboard in an engine well with 3 feet of platform behind it and a but of a skeg you'd be just as safe as behind an inboard. And with the exhaust through the hub less CO

[RINLE]

No laws in my state about what you can surf behind, other than the laws of good sense.

 

Yesterday we ran an adaptive ski clinic and I thought about this topic. It would not have been safe to run an outboard chase boat unless it was set up way differently. Tow boat would have been fine.