jercrane

@Minelickskier i know, I didn’t know how to respond. “Like” felt wrong ? Hoping it’s false alarm for you.

@Minelickskier disliking because that sucks you might be stuck on the shore too. Sorry man

I just joined the unfortunate ranks of Achilles rupture sufferers. Really unfortunate over engagement of the tip at 3 ball in a stupid easy pass and the binding didn’t release soon enough. Sigh. C’est la vie in the sport of waterskiing. Surgery Monday Any tips from those who have gone before? I’m looking for robust long term recovery not speed of recovery. This ski season is done. If I can squeeze in some mellow alpine skiing at the end of next winter so be it.

sigh :( I wish it was easier/less expensive to get kids into this sport Hard to let them try stuff. If I knew this was going to be something she was really into I'd happily drop the money. Too high a probability she does it twice and then it sits in the shed.

Good luck with that. There is no such thing as "fair price" for a ski boat :D

My daughter tried trick skiing for the first time the other day and was into it. Got up on her first try on single ski which I thought was pretty awesome. I found a used board for her but can't find bindings in her size anywhere. I was hoping to get her a used hardshell as I understand it makes learning a lot easier. I really don't want to drop $500+ for a new binding though. I poked around on Ski it again and couldn't find anything small enough. Anyone got a size 4 left foot Reflex in any functional condition they want to sell me? Even if the liner is shot and needs replacing. I'm fine buying a new liner if I can get my hands on working shell, plate and release.

By the way can we just pause for a minute and recognize how cool it is that world champion participates in the same forum with the rest of us idiots. Also @Horton what's up with @JoelHowley's BOS status as "baller" haha :D Those Aussies get no respect.

@JoelHowley thanks for expanding in this. That makes a ton more sense now. So in summary Step 1 fix stack, alignment, structure etc Step 2 isometric contraction to increase control and maximize acceleration @2tracmind I don’t really agree with the alpine skiing analogy. My biggest problem in water skiing is that I have like you far far more hours in the body in alpine skis than water skis. 44 years of alpine skiing with 15 of which was racing at a reasonably high level. I am spending most of my time trying to break alpine skiing habits when in the water. In alpine skiing you need to be way more fluid (ironically). Being rigid is the worst thing you could do. You engage your muscles but you allow the legs to constantly flow. That doesn’t work on a waterski. Anyway I think I get what Joel is saying now

I’m curious what folks think about Joel’s coaching here. Funny aspect aside of this amazing OTF being completely ignored in his evaluation. I’ve never heard anyone position the approach this way. In fact there are a LOT of people on here that I hear saying you should be standing tall and pressing the head away from the water etc. This feels to me like the kind of guidance that would result in me personally skiing more compressed. I’m so focused right now I’m getting out of my damn compressed body position. I did really like and have seen good results from Trent and Rossi’s “punch in the gut” technique they shared on Spraymakers. Maybe this is sort of the same thing and I’m misunderstanding? Thoughts?

my first slalom ski ... even upgraded the binding back in HS when I couldn't afford a modern ski

Perfecting my paracord approach a bit. Using a square braid so it comes out like a rope instead of flat. Changes to color matching paracord. Bought some paracord needles off amazon and added a single splice into the line on each side to prevent slip without adding zip tie. My daughters handle

Like all things the problem here is not universal. I have a buddy on our public lake that is a very good wake boarder and surfs occasionally. He has one of these beasts. He is however incredibly respectful wrt his wakes. If he shows up in a cove and someone is skiing he goes to another cove. He does like to play music from his tower while he rides and I have given shit for this but in general he gets it. On the other hand I know of two families on the lake that let their teenage sons take out their Super Air Nautiques with a giant crew and partying. One of these dipshits actually thinks it's funny to swamp ski boats. He's also the same punk that likes to try and hit Loons with his boat. Then this gets back to the lake association and they start talking horsepower limits which effects all of us. The problem isn't necessarily the boats its the owners and people being a mixed bag in general. We have plenty of wide open expanses on the lake where these boats would be fine. If they were just respectful of shoreline proximity and other activities on the lake. Sadly too many of them like @vtmecheng said would rather ride around giving the rest of us the finger. On a related note if anyone in the Northern New England area ever has some money they want to throw into building a private ski site we have an abandoned gravel pit ready to go. Just struggling to find investors. :D

I was silly last winter and got a new InTow handle without adding the cross bar so I just added this to my handle yesterday with some paracord I had kicking around. Happy enough with it that I ordered some color matching paracord to redo it and maintain my vanity. :) Added same to both my kids handles too. 4 braided strands of paracord with a single prussic knot on one end and a double connection knot in the other side. Actually it’s done with 2 strands doubled back. So you end up with a 4 strand braid with loop for the prussic on one end.

Sadly mine was not Radar compatible. It's the 0.095 thickness fin. If anyone else wants it though give me a ping.

@Justin_C I will sell you mine. I loved mine but switched to the C-75 this year with CG fin so I'm not using anymore. If I hadn't switched skis I would still be rocking the Whisper for sure. DM me if you want to discuss.

@ScottScott not sure I agree on that. Prostar is the best ski boat yes, but not the best ski + small family boat on open lake. SN 200 OB or the newer Nautique 200 is in my opinion a much better ski boat that in a pinch can serve the family needs. Yes having multiple boats would probably be better but thats not an option and I'm not willing to compromise on the ski experience and get some v drive multi-purpose thing. bottomline for me If I am at a tourny or a private dedicated ski lake and there is a new Prostar I am pumped but I own a SN 200 for the family. All that said I think it would be silly for Mastercraft to build a boat that compromised on anything to better meet family needs. They have other boats for families.

@WIRiverRat interesting I may try that

I would email Wally (since you can't call him ... he'll call you :D ). I have been working with him on a new course install for the past few months and he is having a hell of a time with manufacturers right now because Covid. In all likelihood he had to switch suppliers and they are not meeting the quality level. I would be shocked if he didn't take care of you.

@BCM I think the vicious cycle of try harder, do worse might be my issue. I'm only skiing maybe 5-7 sets a week and half of those are open water when our course is not skiable due to permit limitations.

@Fam-man I have it on my list! @ski6jones honestly I have not been chasing at all. My last two sets in the course I did all 22's and crazily enough. Every pass felt like it got a little worse. My first was by far the cleanest. I'm used to my 3rd or 4th being my cleanest and then things go downhill as I get tired. Very weird for every pass to feel progressively harder with no rope change. @DavidN no we have actually had very consistent lake temps for the past month. It has been sitting between 68 and 72 degrees. Warm days and cold nights haven't lent themselves to any water temp gains. I'm eager for it to get up there though I'll tell you that. Tired of wearing neoprene.

I started this season on the early side for me and on a new ski. I've also been skiing significantly more than I usually do (thanks covid :# ). Oddly enough my skiing has degraded substantially as my body is starting to feel stronger and get back into ski shape. My 2nd and 3rd week on the water felt amazing this year. Everything felt like it was starting to click. I'm into week 8 or so now and my onside has gone to crap. Way on the tail and very unbalanced. I either cut way too hard and go into the dreaded wheelie or I try to chill, be taller and more on the front and end up losing so much down course I don't have a prayer at the next ball. I'm really struggling to get back to that nice smooth feeling I was having early on. Oddly enough my offside still feels great for what thats worth. Is it possible that as I'm getting stronger I'm doing more of the bad things I shouldn't. Maybe early in the season I wasn't physically capable of bad technique habits? Now I'm stronger enough to do all the stupid crap again? face>palm What gives and how to I reverse this really frustrating trend? Anyone been through this and escaped without taking a week or two off? My season is too short to take breaks. :)

I am a fan of the GUT articles due to my engineer brain. If I could make one suggestion to improve their usability for me personally it would be to have a single takeaway action for each article. I work best when I have one thing at a time in the brain when I am skiing. If I have too much I’m trying to do at once it all goes to hell. So if each arrival just had that one takeaway thing to work on that could help guide a skier towards a better overall performance that would be huge. That could even be the opening and close of each lesson. For this lesson we will learn about standing tall. The homework will be to stand as if getting out of a chair after the completion of the turn. Etc or something like that. Could even include example body position pics. By making the whole thing super incremental it can build someone up from the baseline. Make it more of a pass this class before moving on kind of thing. Then the simpleton like me can simply work on that. I actually wouldn’t even read the next article until I had “passed” the current exercise. Actually that gives me another idea. This gets a bit more complicated and you guys are pretty busy so it might not be manageable but I would actually pay money for another layer in top of this. What if I could submit videos to you for each lesson? Then you actually pass or fail me based on my ability to execute the lesson at hand. Passing would unlock the next lesson. Failing would mean I have to go back to the lake and keep working on that one thing. My one suggestion turned into a whole giant thing ... haha. Sorry Ignore the brain dump if not helpful. ? The takeaway. Help me work on one thing at a time that eventually gets me to a completely different and better way of skiing.

@Horton well it was first day in the course. I’ve got 15-20 sets of free skiing under my belt already. Alas I am based in NH where we have to deal with a very strong anti skiing crowd and legislation to go with it. Course access is few and far between. It has been said about a thousand times before on here but wow skiing in the course is such a completely different sport. I was feeling amazing on my new ski over the past few weeks. Solid on video. Starting to get a better stack. Then wham everything goes right back to s#!t when I got in the buoys yesterday.

@AdamCord interesting. I was having this issue yesterday in my first day in the course. Everything felt kind of weird like I was slamming into the turn, stalling out and then getting bent over unable to extend coming into the wake. Free skiing with ZO in recreation mode over the past few weeks I have not had this at all. I was on my trusty old B1 but maybe I need to explore some 2s again now that I’m really trying to execute more of the GUT approach. Hmmm Not that I’m actually doing any of it right yet :D Plus based on your last comment if ZO is causing any of my problems then it probably means it’s me causing the problems and not the ZO! Sigh.

Does anyone that is not a tower (over 6 feet) pull this off? Can a short little dude like me 5’8” actually achieve this body position? I would love to say yes but there is some geometry advantages involved with having more height above the pylon. I think. :/