braindamage

2012-2016 is best. has ZO, best wake, least movement from skier pull.

I was skiing with my brother yesterday and marveling about how snowboarding probably saved the sport of snow skiing. 30 years ago on the hill I skied there was no jumps, half pipe, rails, etc and if ski patrol saw you trying to do those things or ski in the woods then they’d take away your ticket. Now it’s pervasive and the next generation continues to enjoy the sport. Maybe our focus should be to: 1) get people into boats so they can see that water sports is a thing 2) get people onto skis, tubes, surfboards, wakeboards so they experience lots of options 3) be deliberate about catching them when they go to college to get them onto the team 4) be deliberate about connecting them post college with people with courses so they don’t lose the bug. Edit: I loved skiing as a young man but didn’t even know that collegiate skiing was a thing until I was too far into my coursework to change, then wasn’t ever able to find anyone to ski with once I was out of college. That was 30 years ago and we have so much better social networking technology that I assume it would be easier to make these connections.

@BrennanKMN I have 7 people I ski with, all but 2 are ex-collegiate skiers. It’s a lot about access and making the time with competing young family/early career pressures. One even got into our rotation by putting a note on my buddy’s windshield complimenting his MC.

Also-I grew up 10 mins from a decent sized midwestern ski hill. They have arrangements with the local elementary schools that bus kids 1/week, provide rentals, a lesson, and a pass that goes until 9pm for super cheap. They’ve been doing this for decades. Everyone I know can at least ski and a lot of us got the bug big time. If we really want to grow the sport…think about establishing similar things with the private ski lakes with a course.

I think it’s creative. So many threads about the sport dying…it seems some innovative ideas might be welcomed.

Good comments fro all, especially the difference between recreational snow and water skiing. You can even tube down some hills. I think the biggest difference is that snow skiing is both social and can be done all day. I love talking with my friends and meeting others on the lift, hanging out in the lodge, and apres ski. Everyone is friendly and willing to engage and enjoy the day. I love getting up at sunrise to spend 45 mins waterskiing with my 1-2 buds, but it lacks the ever present social all day validation of snow skiing. I think this is one of the reasons that surfing has taken off. All day social event.

@EM_ Got it. Im signed up and did day 1 this am.

Exciting!! The foundations 2.0 says it’s designed to follow foundations, but I don’t see the original as an option?

@DangerBoy no lie, when I was a younger man I used to take my boat to the public beach on my days off work and talk girls into going out to learn to ski, swim and hang out. I started at age 13 and it still amazes me that the parents would let me take their daughters in my boat unsupervised. When I go back to visit my hometown, it’s pretty common that some woman will recognize me and talk about how awesome that was.

That I need to continue my fitness and flexibility regiment even during the ski season. Muscle imbalance!

@Wish the difficult part is that the answer is obviously A immediately followed by C. The order could be reversed, of course. B is absolutely a non starter.

@swbca i think the timing of zero ball is a short term issue as long as you always have at least one driver in your boat who has worked it. In other words, I’m not sure this update would be needed after a few sets. My $.02

@Luzz I’m in the final list of candidates and interviewing next week so I expect I’ll be there mid to end January. I don’t have a dry suit, but I’ve skied in my wetsuit at 4deg C as long as we have some heaters and maybe a cooler full of hot water!!

Thanks all!! I did receive a message back from the waterski.ch website and she says the same as @chris55. It looks like there is Cham on Lake Zug but the better plan is looking out of the country.

Ouch!!

And this. Not sure what language. Maybe French? https://www.waterski.ch/index.html

@skialex i found this, but unfortunately I don’t (yet) speak German https://www.wsc-cham.ch/

I’m in a job transition and am considering a position that would move me to Schaffhausen Switzerland which is 40mins north of Zurich. I see lakes nearby, but can’t find anything online about skiing, courses, or private ski lakes. Does anyone have any information or contacts?

I’d look into open water crossover skis. I had one of the predecessors of the HO Omni and it was easy to get up, stable in small chop, and fast. I’d try that or one similar. As for boots, I liked my Radar Vector. It was a great balance of performance and price that worked for me. Radar also has good RTP options. Dragging the back foot makes deep water starts a lot easier!

I feel for ya! I spent 38 years free skiing before meeting some awesome ski buds who ski the course. The only thing worse than old school course muscle memory with cobwebs is open water no instruction muscle memory burned in by decades of doing it terribly wrong. My advice…ski a lot with people willing and able to give small one-thing-at-a-time corrections. It would also accelerate you dramatically if you went to a ski school.

I’ll take a contrarian viewpoint on the impact on this driving the further decline of water skiing. I live and ski on public water, and PP/ZO has made driving for an average skier extremely easy outside the course. My 12 yo could drive me as all he had to do was steer. My wife will even drive. I think this could help reduce the fear and complexity of the entry level person and potentially make course driving available to the novice. Just my $.02

My response is that it can be done…but my gut and head says that it won’t. Does anyone have the actual statistics of the quantities of DD ski boats sold? I’m not sure, but my guess is that it’s something less than 500 annually in the US. This is out of the total boat market of 13,000 (from NMMA). If my estimate is close, then it’s ~5% of the total US registrations. I doubt it’s a good business model to build a low cost niche boat that most consumers would consider a luxury purchase. Previous attempts also seem to support that it won’t happen.

@Bruce_Butterfield you make my point exactly. It takes two to tango, so my note wasn’t intended as a message to only one side of this. My post is more about the posture of the posts that I see on this thread, from all sides. A lot of outrage, anger, bitterness, and justification of each side’s position. I don’t have a ready solution, and if I did, I wouldn’t post it here as it would be torn apart. I’m just sad because I love this sport and am worried that this type of dispute can escalate beyond a reasonable conclusion.

@sunperch the point I’m trying to make is that the response is disproportionate, and is shown through anger and bitterness, which doesn’t create any reasonable environment for resolution or compromise. I don’t have the history, so I hear from a lot of the posters here that this is the “straw that broke the camel’s back”. This is an understandable situation. I simply hope that this straw isn’t what splinters the waterski community, which is undoubtedly shrinking into yet smaller and competing communities…which will accelerate the degradation of participation already in motion. Or as my dad used to say…”cut off your nose to spite your face”. And because the over-arching social and political environment promotes anger and outrage as the normative response, it is unlikely to be resolved through understanding, grace, and compromise. That’s why I say it’s “sad”.

This thread reminds me of what happened to a private golf CC near me. Members got into a major fight over a relatively small issue…lawsuits, bankruptcy, and soon they have no CC. Sad…