JAS -- A couple of them. One was establishing my stacked position and holding it about 5-10 feet past the wake. It's easy to do, but I would often get narrow waiting to turn in to make the gates. My friend told me to forget about the gates for awhile. He said get wide, settle, and turn in with width. I got to where I could consistently come in with great angle and, being LFF, really come out of one ball with great angle as well. Since I prioritized my body position, I would at times ski before the gates and end up turning before the ball with quite a bit of width out from the ball. Sometimes I would run an entire pass turning wide of and in front of every ball.
Starting to sound like a book here.
Coming into two ball I was edge-changing too late. I get such great velocity with my onside pull that I was overshooting two and ending up pointed right at 3-ball. My friend adjusted my fin for tip and steepened my wing angle, but especially told me to edge change at the second wake. All of a sudden I'm carrying out to #2 and settling into good position for 3. It worked right away!
So very soon I'm running 22 off the dock, and it's easier. When I went out at 28, I got as wide as I could on my pullout (still well past the 2-4-6 line) and simply applied the same principles. Only this time I'm hardly working at all. The ski comes around easily and quickly -- it feels like I'm just lightly skipping from side-to-side. My buddy tells me my ski is finally in its element, where it was designed to work.
It really came down to prioritizing form over buoys, and now that the form is fairly solid I'm running the buoys most of the time, and getting the gates more. But If I'm ready to turn in and wait for my perfect gate shot I'll get pulled narrow and be lucky to get halfway downcourse.
WAWASKR -- Yes, he's been doing it for a long time. He'd run 35-off regularly in his younger days. Right now he needs a knee replacement, and has turned to coaching and tuning skis as a hobby.