vtmecheng

@MISkier I tried getting my hand in there without gloves on and didn't get past my fingers without serious force. With gloves on it would be even harder.

@Killer it's from a square plastic cat litter bucket I got from a neighbor. Only cost was zip ties.

I needed a two piece design to clear my handle loop. Also, I tried to punch through it really hard and couldn't.

Just made this. Probably a couple more zip ties than needed but it's a my initial try.

That's really cool to improve essentially everything you want in the boat. Nice work and something to be proud of.

Really cool build. I bet the wakes are nice but tracking took a hit. Also, with a full tank and only two in the boat it probably wants to dunk the nose with even the smallest wake.

Taking video a step further, you can send it to a number of really good coaches for their assessment and the cost of doing that is really reasonable.

Definitely don't go straight legs. Some bend is necessary where you bend at the knees and ankles to keep your butt/hips up. How much to bend your legs is of some debate on here but for what you are doing it doesn't matter as much.

It's really hard to work on more than one or two things at a time and it takes a long time to knock out bad habits and force good ones to sink in (at least for me). I'm no coach and am a mediocre skier at best so am going to point you to the base advice from people who are coaches and top end skiers. If you listen to the spraymakers podcast, and you really should, there's three simple but BIG rules that Chris Rossi has all the kids at his school say: "Arms straight, arms straight, have fun." This is great advice for all skiers. Keeping arms straight throughout the entire time sets you up for better form everywhere. At every cut and every wake crossing just keep telling yourself, "Arms Straight." Say it out loud if you need to, that's what I did to start kicking the habit.

Lacrosse ball pushing against the wall. Hurts a lot but helps the knots.

@bananaron I broke a rope free skiing years ago, it hurt a lot and gave me a small concussion. Not worth it, especially if you are getting HO, Radar, or Proline ropes that don't cost as much. A ski partner just broke a rope earlier this year and was lucky it happened when getting up. New ropes and handles are cheap insurance.

Did they give Jonathan Travers that one ball on his opening pass? Sure looked inside of the ball on the video.

It's tough to say what is going on because there's a lot of different muscles in the shoulder. It's easy to find some different rotator cuff tests online so you can narrow down the injury. Don't forget the horn blowers test, some rotator cuff test lists forget that one but it's a good one for the teres minor. Biggest of all, if it hurts that bad get to an shoulder ortho. Good luck, I injured my teres minor earlier this year and I couldn't even try to ski for 8 or 9 weeks. It was really frustrating since our weather was perfect that whole time. Good thing I took it easy for so long though because I'm skiing better now than I ever have been.

@DanE I don't get your post. I don't think there's anything great about touchscreens and would prefer a boat without one. All I'm saying is that at some point these boats will be 10+ years old and the touchscreen tablets will likely start failing from the thermal cycles and moisture. Then we get to try and find the boat specific replacement, it's not like we can just swap it out with the newest iPad. At that point, a lower price point new boat may be more desirable than a used boat with electronics failure.

Just a thought: Budget ski boats didn't sell great, or at least the margins weren't favorable enough, so were discontinued. What we have now are great skiing boats that include a ton of features like touch screens and micro-tuners. These are fantastic for someone who wants a new boat and can afford it. Those who can't afford it have the great option to buy a used boat with a nice wake that will run for many years, often with few problems that really sideline the boat. These used boats have fewer electronics and what they do have are usually not horrible to fix (I know there are exceptions). Here's my point, in 10 years the boats of today will be sold used but the electronics are likely to be glitching, sensors failing, and touch screens dying. At that time the buyer will have to select from a new boat, a 10 year old boat that likely needs expensive replacement of electronics, or a really old boat. Maybe that will be when the budget ski boat becomes popular again, when skiers want something newer than 20 years old, don't want the headaches and upkeep of the 2020 models, and can't afford $100k for a new boat. Maybe I'm wrong and these boats will hold up to many years of heat, cold, water, and vibration/shock but that seems like a tall order for those kinds of electronics. More on topic, I really don't like the look or price of the new Nautique. If I had the cash it would go to Mastercraft, but I don't so neither company should care about my opinion.

If you do a search here you will see that ankle injuries are common. I don't have much advice to getting better faster. You many want to take a look at some of the release binding options like Reflex, the Syndicate release system, and Mikes Overall Binding (MOB). Lace bindings release great for some but not everyone and you have to be careful how tight you make them every time. Take care of that ankle.

Selling like crazy, both new and used. Bad year to buy in, great year to sell.

Great service from HO for sure. I am curious if @markn is over tightening his bindings or something. It seems strange to have two skies break. Did the Pro break at the binding inserts too?

I think it's worth waiting to see how people like the new ski and tail options before passing judgement.

@Than_Bogan that's why I was so quick to apologize. I've been an engineer for long enough to know that most of us suck at communication and are even worse at subtleties. At least my wife has gotten used to it, either that or after 20 years she's just numb.

To go with what I think @Than_Bogan is getting at, I would love a ski with a fixed fin and binding position that worked perfectly for me. Next best would be one that only required a binding adjustment, followed by one that only needed a single-degree-of-freedom fin adjustment. Less time screwing around with settings and more time for me to ski and work on the real problem, my skiing. Too bad that doesn't exist.

Sorry for jumping to conclusions on your intent. I took the timing and ran with it.

I think we all know what this is in reference to. Using your rational, fins are close to as bad as it gets followed closely by binding placement. These require arbitrary measurements, with some level of infinite adjustability (within the range windows), that the user must adjust using feel. I don't think fixed fins and bindings is realistic. Having three set tale options that you can bolt on seems easy when compared to these and is considerably lower cost to the company than making three different molds, resulting in three different high end models for a user to select from after limited demo time, at best. If a single ski design could work for everyone then why do some skies work for some and not for others? I'm sure any of the ski companies would love to make the magical ski that works for every person without a single adjustment required. This is just not a realistic goal. Like so many things, customization can be wonderful and horrible. It all depends on the application and how it is engineered into the system. Some level of discreet customization is often positive, especially when it comes to a product that will be used by people of many different shapes and styles. Let's give things a chance, see the results, and then pass judgment.

For $1900 I hope they have figured out some way to easily measure DFT.

@Martin1980 I ski in some cold March water with a rear kicker. A neoprene sock works great.