DefectiveDave

I've been trying this for quite a while now and in retrospect I think my original beliefs on the reasons for the efficacy of the approach are flawed. I think in the process of changing my glide I was simply generating more speed in my glide before turn-in (sub-consciously) which allowed me to get into a better stacked position. I essentially stopped trying this the last few weeks and just started trying to get more speed in the glide with much better results. I figured I would follow up just in case anyone were to read this in the future.

I just tried this today and it was interesting. You can definitely feel the very prominent arc of the rope going out and you start to learn what you need to do to make the turn and get back to the other side. I certainly don't think I would have been able to make it out to any buoys, but just feeling the differences compared to my usual length of 28 off was educational. You have to stick with the rope (i.e. handle control) right up until you initiate your turn to go back to the other side, otherwise it's slack city. I also started to feel that if I stuck with the rope, the release of the ski to initiate the turn was much more pronounced. It's like you're saving that energy until you need it to initiate the turn and head back to the other side quickly. Also, it works totally different muscles than the longer line lengths, but that might just me using even worse "form" than normal. Anyway, I felt like it was kind of an eye opening experience, but I don't know that I can translate what I felt to the course. I might need to try free skiing it for a while to see if I build any muscle memory that I can take back into the course.

Cool, glad they found them. I'm not a fan of the wakes on public water, but I'm happy as long as more people can participate or continue to participate in water sports. Just need to find a reliable way of converting them from the dark side.

I still haven't had a chance to get on the water since last time, but here's another video of a pro-skier (April Coble Eller) who doesn't really load the front foot during the gate glide and maybe even during the turn-in. She still get's excellent body position through the gate. Looks very similar to Rossi's gate in some respects: Go to 24 seconds or so if the video doesn't automatically start there.

@Texa6, I respectfully agree with you on all points. :-) Perhaps calling it "falling back" isn't accurate and I should elaborate. Lately, I feel like I've been too long winded and people ignore me so I was trying to be more concise. In that vein I tried to make an brief observation and didn't really dig into it too much. Nate is still very much on his front foot, and I totally agree it is necessary to load through the front foot in order to efficiently approach the first wake. What I see in the above video is the initial movement towards the gate (just subtly getting free of the boat), followed by the more intense leaning phase (where I said he is falling back). It's almost like there are two gears, and it's more obvious (especially the 1st gear) in this video: Anyway, I do believe Nate's COM is moving backwards (down-course) while the ski is moving forward (up-course), but his load stays through the front foot because it is a dynamic event. For example, were I standing in place on land with my right foot in front of my left (RFF) and I wanted to move my COM backwards, I would need to push off of my right, front foot. I believe this to be the reason that Nate is able to keep the water breaking at the front foot during this motion, he is pushing is COM back and loading through the front foot. So maybe calling it "actively leaning back" is more accurate since I would argue that it is likely an active movement on Nate's part. However, at some point the dynamic motion reaches equilibrium as the boat really starts to load the rope. In this case the boat will load through the rope, moving the skier towards the front of the ski and keeping the skiers weight on the front foot (assuming they have the right body position). I believe that the boat starts to significantly load Nate at some point after the initiation of the 2nd gear, but after he has bitten off a significant chunk of, if not all of, his lean. My reason for believing this is that once the boat has picked you up, it is extremely difficult to get into a better body position and increase the lean angle. Also, one important characteristic of the lean angle (needed to generate cross-course angle) is that the ski is further up course than the skier's COM. Therefore, it follows that moving the ski up-course relative to the COM is difficult after being loaded by the boat. So it makes sense to me (at least hypothetically) that leaning back before being picked up by the boat is an efficient way to quickly generate lean angle because it moves the ski up-course while moving the COM down-course. Mapple, Asher, and Rossi seem to start a little further back than Nate, but each of them is loading through their front foot as they start approaching the center line. My theory is that they are leaning back still further from where they start and by doing so loading through their front foots as they initiate the turns. In particularly, Mapple and Asher to me always look like they have crazy lean angles. So, maybe it is better to start further forward like Nate does, but it appears as though you can still get in excellent body position even if you don't. Anyway, I don't assume that I'm correct here. I'm been wrong many times before. I'm just hypothesizing a mechanism to get stacked during the gate initiation based on something @Horton said and a video I saw. I could be totally off base, but it at least seems like a rational possibility to me. I'm gonna give it a try the next time I'm out on the water to see if it is a) actionable and b) effective. Of course, acting on anything @Horton says (even indirectly) is probably inadvisable, but I'm feeling adventurous.

I know Nate Smith isn't an obvious example of what we're discussing here, given that he seems to be pretty forward on the ski during the glide, but check out this video from 2013 at 4m10s: It seems to me that one of his first moves during gate turn-in is to lean back. The upper body stays aligned but the knees bend and he falls backwards. I chose this video because the angle is just right to see it (it's not apparent from video inside the boat). So even though he is forward before the turn-in, I would suspect he is just as far back as Asher, Rossi, or Mapple after that dynamic movement. They very likely lean back in the same way if we had video from those angles, but maybe they just start back a little further due to habit/technique/comfort or whatever. Maybe starting further back makes it more natural/easier to execute. It's an interesting possibility and I'm glad @Horton made the observation.

Normally I would rant about the technical challenges of such a proposal, but screw that this time. I'm sure they are well aware of them. Plus, it's a cool idea and maybe they can make it work. Go for it and good luck!

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.

@jimbrake , It is hard to say what aggressive really means, it's all relative. I think to me it just feels aggressive compared to what I've been doing. If I stick with it a few years, I probably wouldn't even think about it or notice it. Unfortunately I don't have any video. It takes up valuable skiing time and afterwards I get obsessive trying to nitpick what's happening in the video, haha. @Andre , I didn't change the timing, but I have been playing around with the pullout intensity lately to either carry more or less speed at turn-in. Overall, on average I would say that I've reduced my pullout intensity somewhat because it feels more comfortable. I feel more load on the rope as my speed starts to fall below the boat speed and at that point I'm forced to edge out pretty aggressively (from my perspective) for a brief period of time to maintain width. Then when it's time to go I just initiate and it's like the energy stored loading the rope and edging out with the ski is released, popping everything into place for the turn-in (kind of like a spring unloading). I don't really have a set time to turn-in, I just watch the gates and go when it feels right. If you get a chance to try it tomorrow morning I do think the speed in the glide is pretty important. For me, if I'm going too fast it's hard to feel the load and edge out effectively. So if it's not working out at first, you might want to try pulling out earlier or with less intensity to reduce the speed, just a little bit, before turn-in. This is probably just a comfort zone thing as I find it hard to believe that having less speed is superior to having more speed, but it's at least something to consider.

@jimbrake, I see what you did there.

I've always had gate issues and I could never really get a good stack going into 1 ball; some might argue that I never got stacked at all going through the gates. Looking at video I can't argue with those people. Over time I just developed "methods" to deal with my lack of stack and maintain my outbound direction at shorter line lengths (28 and 32-off in my case) so I could limit the slack at one ball. I nailed down the timing so that my gates were consistent and repeatable, but the technique always sucked. However, lately I've felt like my gates are really coming together. I feel slow coming into 1 ball with a tight line and the turn just seems to complete itself into a stacked position heading to 2 ball. Yet, I also feel like I'm putting less effort into my gates. The only thing I've really changed is I decided to stay as wide as possible during the glide. I've been accomplishing this by simply trying to keep an edge out during the glide with tension on the rope. I'm not talking about a little bit of tension, I've been loading the line aggressively with probably 30-50 lbs of force, if not more (it's hard to gauge these things on the water). Then when it's time to turn-in I just go for it (hips from 10-2 to initiate) and it feels as though the force on the ski from edging out is released, throwing the ski wide. The effect is that I maintain width, my turn-in happens much faster and I am able to get into a decent stacked position while I'm still wide, giving me time to generate speed into the gate without much effort. I'm RFF and use a 2-handed gate. I've always heard you should edge out during the glide to maintain width. I think every skier has heard that at some point. I thought I'd been doing it, but was I really? I would pull out and get into my glide and try to keep the line "tight", but thinking back on it I probably only had a couple of pounds on the line and on video I definitely wasn't maintaining width right before turn-in. However, I've also heard several times that when you're edging out you should "keep the line tight", which I interpreted to be about the same thing as "no slack". This, combined with the fact that we call it a glide, is probably why before now I never really tried edging out aggressively during the glide and before the turn-in. It's also entirely possible that one man's "keep the line tight" feels quite aggressive to myself, it's all relative after all. The thing is, I'm not sure if the aggressive edging out during the glide is what's truly helping my gates. I know something is, but it's entirely possible I'm misinterpreting the results. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Maybe the edging out has nothing to do with it and it has simply changed something else about my technique that is making the actual difference. I hoping to get to the bottom of this. Do any ballers have insight into this particular issue? Do other RFF skiers feel like they are edging out pretty aggressively before the turn-in and is it something they feel is important? How about LFF skiers? Perhaps this concept only applies at the longer line lengths (32-off and below)? It's easy to say, "if it works, keep doing it" and I fully intend to do so. However, I wonder if perhaps this might be one of those details that might not translate well in coaching given the relative nature of how we all perceive certain actions or queues.

@Gloersen , From that angle Asher looks really compressed going through the gates. Not so much through the rest of the course, but he looks like he's doing a deep squat through the gates. I wonder if that helps him get into stacked position after the glide without having to fight the load on the rope. Bend knees, lower COM, and get hips closer to the handle; just have to be careful not to let the upper body break forward. I guess that kind of makes sense in my head. Anyway, back on topic. Looking at videos of big dawgs at 34 mph, from the initiation to the pull-out until the time they pass through the gates is about 5.5 to 6.0 seconds for most of them (2-handed gate). Furthermore, the pull-out timing is about 1.5-2.0 seconds depending on intensity and how you time it. Based on this, last year I started timing my gates such that I pulled out slightly before the right-hand pre-gate buoy was obstructed by the boat (this gives you about 5.5-6.0 seconds) and I held my pull-out for a count of 1.5 Mississippi's (so 1 Mississippi, 2 Missi-). After I started feeling the right intensity for the pull out, this approach really seemed to help my consistency on the gates. I could then also adjust the pullout intensity based on wind.

@tap, How much custom fabrication is required to make your setup? Like, could I just buy all the hardware, flash your software, and strap it to my pylon? Also, how did you attach your load cell to the rope? I already have one of these, but I was a bit hesitate to attach it without a large radius of curvature piece and that proved challenging at the time.

@tap, Very cool and thanks for all the hard work! Are you accepting donations to continue this work? I would gladly donate a little bit if there was some mechanism to do so. Probably won't make or break the project, but it could be a good way of showing appreciation. Also, just out of curiosity given the current data, are you doing a 2 handed gate with a glide? What line lengths do you normally ski? I'm already trying to learn something from the data, haha.

Awesome video! Love the perspective, just wish it started like 3 seconds earlier so I could see the glide and turn in, haha.

I think the consensus is that most of the new Rotella oil is no longer SM/SN rated and hence you shouldn't use it in your boat. An exception might be T6 multi-vehicle but it is only available in 5W-30. Also, if you can find old stock that is still SM/SN rated you should be fine (it should say so on the back of the jug). If your engine requires that rating and you don't have older jugs of Rotella lying around, then the following oils seem like good alternatives for the time being: Valvoline VR1 Chevron Delo P.S. I actually ran my boat last week with new Rotella oil in it before reading this thread. I plan to change the oil before running the boat again, but could that potentially cause issues?

Thanks guys! I'm sending @John Brooks a PM as he is local and can take a look at it when it's convenient for him. For now I will feel comfortable skiing this week. :-) @eleeski, I'll look into the marine tek after John gets a chance to look at the damage. If there is material missing it's probably very minimal (other than the shallow scratches), so hopefully I can avoid it. Also, I think you are right, it is gelcoat, not clearcoat. Do you have any brand recommendations for gelcoat? Thanks!

Perhaps this is a stupid question, but I'll ask anyway because I've been told there are no stupid questions. There are only stupid people who ask questions. Getting the boat out a few days ago (2000 Ski Nautique), it managed to come to rest on the wheel well of the trailer because we have a difficult launch site. We of course put the boat back in the water and fixed it after realizing what was up. There doesn't appear to be any real damage to the fiber glass other than some minor scratches. It also scuffed up the clearcloat (unfortunately I don't have any pictures). Now I want to take the boat out in the next few days and won't be able to fix the clear coat in that time. But I worry that it might cause problems for the fiberglass if I don't fix the clear coat first. So, a couple of quick questions: Are there any complications if I don't fix the clear coat first? Also, any recommendations on how to fix the clear coat? Thanks ballers!

If I free ski, I like to ski well beyond my PB. It feels different and when I go back to my normal line lengths things feel easier on open water. It also makes it more fun for me, which is kind of the point. :-)

Thanks everyone! It seems like it might be worth waiting until spring to sell it at this point. Hopefully the market will be a little hotter then and if I do some basic things to make it look nicer it could potentially sell faster.

@keithh2oskier and @Orlando76, Thanks so far guys. It seems my cost basis might have been off somewhat. I had seen some nice condition 91-92' boats posted between $10.5-12.5k on ski-it-again, so I got my number by assuming $11k and subtracting $3k for upholstery, buffing, and decals to get it up to snuff. Perhaps those listings were wishful thinking or maybe my repair estimates were too low and didn't account for the trouble of actually doing those things. Seems like prices are all over the place. So assuming $7.5k is the baseline for this boat. Perhaps a more appropriate cost given the condition is in the $5k range?

I'm selling my old 92' SN. More info here: SIA Posting Boat looks awful, but skis/runs great. It could be of good value to someone looking for a ski boat to fix up over the winter or just use as is. If anyone is interested or has any questions let me know. I've posted for $8k on SIA, but I don't yet have a good sense of the value of this particular boat. I'll consider any reasonable offers.

The main thing for me was that it was a pain to get something in there to catch the fuel due to clearance issues. A small cup ended up working pretty well for me. So long as you are just removing the LPFP, you only need to worry about the fuel in the pump and the intake line. There might be a little bit in the output line, but it should be minimal. Also, take some wipes to clean fuel off your hands just in case (you can get them at the auto parts store). The chances of the gas igniting are very low (but not zero due to things like static discharge), but you don't want any on your hands or anything else in the off chance it happens. Finally, you'll want something to deposit the caught fuel into (I used a gas can for old-fuel which I use with the lawnmower) and a rag to wipe up anything you miss. Good luck and be safe, fuel can be dangerous if you're not careful.

I recently had this problem with the GT40 and fixed by replacing the low-pressure fuel pump. Might have been the same thing as mentioned by @rpg but I didn't bother disassembling the old one to find out. It's apparently a common problem with your exact symptoms and is well documented on the correct craft forums. That is the correct part you've linked at skidim.

How about something asymmetric which just floats without the need for a tight anchor? This is just a sketch, but this design should allow waves to efficiently head towards the shore (while redirecting a little bit of the energy downwards with it's own weight) and minimize any reflecting waves. It would then prevent the waves from readily traveling back towards the course by forcing them up the ramp. It would have to be weighted correctly and I'm sure the proportions are wrong, but seems like a reasonable idea. Other designs already mentioned would probably be better at dissipating energy, but this one wouldn't need to be adjusted if the water levels changed significantly.