BrennanKMN

For me the ability part comes in with my ski buddies. Of my ski partners I am the only one that could potentially run 3+ passes in a tournament. My two partners could do 0-1 maybe on a really good day 2 passes. That makes them have very little interest in going and I don't have much interest in going if I cannot bring my skiing friends. Yeah, yeah, I am sure I'll make new friends at the tournaments, but I'd rather not exclude them based on their ability so I stay home and we have fun Saturday mornings together instead. Why would I (and my buddies) pay all that money for very little water time? If we all could run 3-4+ passes without fail I could understand a little more. Perfect courses, new boats, great drivers, awesome sites are all great, but they don't outweigh the fun factor I can have with my buddies on the weekend. Just my thoughts as someone who joined the AWSA 4 years ago thinking I'd ski some tournaments and still haven't.

These wakeboarders are taking ballast to a whole new level!

I've always just warn a regular old headband. Just keep it dry at each end and you're fine. It's mostly for my ears, cold water and air hurts!

Nearest corse to me is a submersible on a public lake. If the weather is good enough for skiing there will be 1-4 boats with 2-3 skiers on each waiting for passes from 6:30am to around 9. That time can run into 10 or 11 if there are a decent number of public boaters using the lake as well causing us to have to wait for rollers or other boats. Course almost never gets used other than early mornings and early afternoons. There is generally too much public boat traffic for it to be a viable daytime option. There are almost no courses that are a viable option during the weekends (outside of early mornings) around me. You have to ski before Memorial Day or after Labor Day for the weekend day time to be an option around here.

If I am not mistaken, I am pretty sure I read somewhere where Joel said those were snow ski boots.

Wow. I just assumed that once it was reported stolen it would be pretty hard to do anything with it legally unless it was outside of the country. Guess not.

Lots of boats getting stolen in Canada. I would think those would be pretty difficult to move.

The comparison against alpine skiing is interesting. I raced slalom with my high school and skied at lot every winter (3-6 times a week). I recall 80% or more of the time I was at a ski hill there was at least one team practicing gates. That is a lot of visibility to the competitive side of snow skiing right in front of the 'weekend worriers'. Hell, the place where we trained right in the Minneapolis metro closed down 1/3 of the entire place just for teams to train on during the week nights. Pretty hard to miss... I cannot think of anything like that for water skiing. If it does happen it is nowhere near 80%. Visibility is the key, and it ain't on TV. It is right next to everyone already doing the sport....

Yeah, I was pretty bummed about that clinic that fell through. It isn't often I get some lessons at home. Would totally be in for a clinic in MN.

I took a 5 gallon bucket and made a rebar spike ball. I attached a ~25lb piece of iron in between the spike ball and the course mainline to keep the pull angle down helping to drag and lock in the spike ball. Worked pretty good for me on our mucky bottom. Came back a week later to really tighten after dropping it and it didn't budge. For you it probably isn't a great idea if you need to use your tow boat to install it. I had a small crap fishing boat for doing course work.

Why does it matter? I have never really used a manufacturers weight number for anything. If the boat performs well who cares? If you actually need the weight for something like towing capacities or what not - go to a scale.

I know for Nautique you are correct, and most of those can be upgraded to ZO fairly easy. The feel difference (I believe) comes from the different programming - RPM in PP vs. GPS in ZO. If you can swap in ZO without having to do much more than some wiring and maybe an ECM flash then it is a no brainer. If your boat requires more than that I'd get Z-Box and call it a day.

The only DBW PP boats I have ever seen were the early promo boats right when ZO came out and those were all PP classic. Seems like most had both ZO and PP - mine did. I only put the PP gauge in for a week to see what it was like next to the ZO when I bought it. I had a mechanical PP boat with stargazer before my current boat; and I'd prefer that to DBW PP classic.

A not frozen lake!

Dyna-Ski is the first that comes to mind. Unless used boats are an option, then that opens up some more doors.

@rico I agree 100%. The same is true about your statement, if you are turning the wheel in anticipation you are potentially causing the boat to move prematurely as well. My point being if you design a system that reacts to a deviation in 0.01 seconds, does that movement really matter?

I guess I fail to understand why reaction time really matters if you can correct for a deviation with a very tight degree of accuracy and in fractions of a second. Would a skier notice the difference between a driver anticipating a pull and correcting the boat bath slightly before or as the pull came or a boat that never left center line more than 2cm regardless of when the pull occurred? To me a 'learning' system goes right back to the root of the problem. How are you going to bring your learned settings with you? Is each skier going to carry a flash drive with their settings and hand it to the driver before each set? With a system that isn't learned it makes the boat path very consistent between different boats, drivers, settings, lakes, wherever. Regardless, it would be a super fun learning experience to try skiing behind a perfectly straight pull. I think a lot of us would find it quite eye opening.

@BraceMaker What is your definition of perfect? There is no such thing as perfect. Even if you have a sled under water with 10,000 HP pulling it and more steel than the empire state building supporting it, no matter what when you add load it slows down. That slow down will just be so minor it is imperceptible. Having that deviation will be exactly what makes it not like a brick wall to ski against. Just like @ral mentioned about the early versions of ZO, nobody liked the perfect rock solid exactly 36 MPH pull. That is why we have the ABC123 now among other tweaks. Why not start with keeping the boat path inside of the allowable tolerances and you can adjust from there? You can always tighten up the response time to limit deviation. Like I mentioned earlier, with the proper equipment you could have a deviation of less than 0.5mm or something. Is that too much of a deviation that you'd notice? Even if you have a 'learning' system, people are unpredictable. Your pullout might be normally 300lbs of force, the next day it is 200lbs because your tired. The system has learned that you usually pull out with 300lbs of force so it anticipates that and corrects for it. You have just created a center line deviation that created a disadvantage to the skier.

With a properly designed system any outside force wouldn't matter. Skier weight, wind, ski, rollers, ect. With an accurate enough GPS, fast enough steering and a tightly tuned PID loop you'd never see the boat deviate more than a predetermined amount. This is exactly how ZO works. It sees a speed deviation from the baseline speed and it reacts. How fast it reacts and how hard it reacts (the PID loop) is controlled by the ABC123 settings. ZO could have been programmed to use 100% throttle to get back to baseline ASAP, but skiers likely would have found that harsh and undesirable. I have a feeling that 'perfect' steering and 'perfect' speed are more of an ideal on paper, not in the real world. I for one like driving the boat, it's all part of the skiing experience to me.

Pick up a Curt #45900 At $125 bucks it will do anything you will likely ever need. I keep it in the bed of my truck and know I can handle just about any trailer. I never saw the appeal of the aluminum rapid hitches, over priced bling IMO. If you only ever tow your boat, I'd just buy a quality drop hitch and move on though.

@Jody_Seal You need to take that to Eric at Duraburb and get a Duramax put in it. He's right near Orlando. Does some amazing builds that are almost 100% OEM. https://www.facebook.com/duraburbinc/

If you have to ask you probably don't have an ad blocker installed/running. I'd reckon you're good to go.

Coming from a huge Nautique fan if I was given my choice of a new boat today I would be getting a ProStar. The new Nautique is just too damn ugly for me to want. The Malibu seems like a solid boat, but not leading the pack in anyway. The ProStar has a crazy good wake, looks sharp, good resell, proven hull now after 6 years. Just my opinion.

What does Coast Guard approval look like for an all electric boat? Did the Electric Ski Nautiuqe ever go through the USGC approval process? I know nothing about it, but I would bet there are/would be some hurdles there as well. I think a hybrid would be pretty cool. Electric for lots of the idle time and slow speed stuff and gas for towing skiers.

Exactly what BraceMaker said. I just have a ScanGauge II, boost, and EGT in a console pocket on my truck monitoring other parameters I feel are valuable. No different than the Faria bus gauges on the Nautiques where you can scroll through additional parameters on the gauge's digital displays. I am used to commercial vehicles and equipment where you have access to all the data, not just what the OEM deems important to the 'general consumer'. I cannot stand cars where they have a fuel gauge and a speedometer and nothing else.