h2onhk

Get your crew hooked on skiing! Find a Nautique 196 or Sport Nautique, Mastercraft 197, or maybe a Malibu LXi for ~$30k or less, then take the other ~$30-50k and drop it on a pontoon for your floating and night cruises. More room for everyone.

Thanks for the feedback. My gate needs some work for sure. We don't have 55's on our portable course so I start farther out from centerline to be able to see the left gate and 5 ball mark.

I have run several 32's this year. More than I ever have in a single season. The pass is starting to slow down a bit and I can feel myself making mistakes and then trying to correct them before the next buoy. In years past it was always just a blur. A few weeks ago I really started to focus on waiting on the boat for the connection and staying off my back foot. I have also been working to improve my edge change and pre-turn to keep from being pulled down course. I turned 3ball at 35off last week and know that whatever is hurting me at 32 is killing me at 35. Curious what other ballers see and where I could improve. Video link attached for your viewing pleasure. Any and all advice/criticism is welcome. I take it all constructively! Note that the gate on this pass was terrible. I double pulled but was able to recover. Then I decided to shove the tail on 5 🙄.

Portable courses are awesome! We also use a stripped down pontoon boat. No railing, no seats, no console, just a flat deck and 9.9hp outboard with tiller. Makes a great working platform and the small outboard is easy to maneuver. Plenty of power to tension it up as well. If this is your first time putting the course in and you have access to a decent section of yard/beach, I would recommend laying out the gate and ball 1 on land just to see how it all goes together.

15, 22 have been automatic for the last few years. 28 has almost been automatic and could usually scrap my way through 90% of the time. Wheels would fall off at 32. Usually could get 3-4 and not much more. Would spend several passes in a row struggling to get as many as I could at 32. I know that I have a problem with my center of mass and riding the tail when things get dicey. One evening a few weeks ago I took a different approach and resulted in my ah-ha moment this year. Instead of running right down the line, I dropped my 15 pass and did 5 straight passes at 22. Each pass I focused on the connection with the boat and waiting for the boat after each turn no matter how ugly it felt. Then ran 5 passes at 28 doing the same thing. A slight pause after each turn waiting for the boat hookup resulted in a more consistent stack and better cross course position/speed. Next time out everything felt slower and ran right through my first 32 of the season. Have run a few more after that and getting deeper into 35 each time.

@101driver EVA is a soft textured foam that is on the handle grip. It is an option vs. the traditional rubber grip like you find on slalom handles. I have used both style grips for tricks and either should work well for you. As far as width and diameter, that is more of a personal preference. The standard is usually 12" width and 1" diameter. Bennetts boat and ski store has a trick handle w/ toe loop on sale for the same price as a hands only handle. Link shown below. Trick Handles | 3eventstore A slalom rope at 28' off (14.25m) is almost the exact same length as most trick ropes so you could save a few bucks by just getting the trick handle and swapping it on a slalom line. Tricking is awesome and a great way to spend more time on the water when finished with a slalom set or if the water is too rough for slalom skiing. Hope this helps in your decision.

Green Giant Arborvitae. Grows very fast (~ 3' per year), no leaves or other droppings hitting the water, and its hardy in zones 5-8 (midwest). Might be able to find a large price break online somewhere if you buy in bulk.

@LeonL I believe so. I haven't interacted with them since the Auglaize River had their water ski club. I was just a kid back then.

This one is located in Van Wert. https://pleasantshores.com/

@OREGON85 we install our portable course on a river with minor currents at times. 1.5-3 isn't awful , but will definitely pull your turn balls downstream a little bit. Just recreational course skiers here, so its good enough for us. We just adjust out gate timing a little bit to compensate for the amount of drift. Again, not perfect, but its doable.

I can actually feel myself breathing through the pass vs. holding my breath.

Trick

@JimK I also live and ski on a river with my family. Depth is similar (7-15') and we have always used a portable course. Once the spring and early summer flooding pass, we put the course in on Sunday evenings and pull it out on Thursdays evenings. This helps mitigate the risk of damage during the amateur hour shenanigans that take place on the weekends. To expedite the process of installing and removing, we bought an old 20' junk pontoon boat for $600 and stripped it down to just the deck. The portable course is stored on there underneath a tarp when not in use. A little 9.9hp outboard motor is used to maneuver the pontoon around. With the large flat work space, 3 of us have plenty of room to work and stage the PVC arms. We can have the course in or out in about 20min, probably 15min if we really pushed it. It also keeps all the water, scum, muck and other fun stuff that the PVC poles bring up from the bottom, out of our ski boats. We have one permanent concrete anchor staged upriver of our course location with a 100' section of cable and old buoy attached to it. When putting the course in, we just connect the portable course mainline to the cable and do our thing. This ensures we always are back in the same spot where there is protection from the wind and light weekday boat traffic . The 9.9hp is more than enough to tension the downstream anchor and properly align the course. Pending on the amount of rain, the current can have an impact on the position of the turn balls a little bit. We just simply adjust our gate timing (early/late) to compensate for how much the balls have drifted downstream. I know its not ideal, but for a public river its the best we can do. I know this doesn't answer your original question about the mainline anchoring relative to the turn buoys. Just trying to offer another solution from one river skier to another. Awesome to hear your kids are into it as well. Definitely makes it more fun and provides another set of hands when needed! My 13yr old has been consistent on the mini course this year at 27mph (finally got her interested!) and my 8yr old son ran the mini course on a trick ski for the first time last evening. Grinning ear to ear as he rounded 6 and came through the gates. Good times!

@ral I use a Tfactor on my slalom and a leverage on my trick. Comparing these can be a little difficult because the leverage tightness has a lot to do with how tight you have the overlays, where as the Tfactor has a little more adjustment with the cinch cord. Never had an issue with cramping other than my leverage does seem to squeeze my toes down a little tighter. I have the leverage overlays set where I need a spritz of 303/lube to slam my foot in the binding in colder temps. No 303 needed on the Tfactor.

I use a front T-Factor. Size M. Shoe size is a mens 9.5. The binding itself is pretty tight and holds my foot well. I still use the original cinch and just snug it up. Once this one wears out, I'm ordering another. Great binding in my opinion.