2Valve

Its easy to forget that winter is time for the lake to go quiet, take shelter under the frozen liquid and recharge it's energy for the approaching spring. We even have a trio of bald eagles hanging around. And for the stargazers in all of us...... https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/great-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dec-21-2020

I would talk to Vince at skidim.com. He helped me diagnose a cool running engine on my boat. Since new my 2002 PCM equipped 350 has run about 140F. Since I have a floor heater, I've never been too happy with it's performance, thinking it could be hotter. And it often seemed like it would take forever for the gauge to even move on colder days. I talked to Vince this fall and he suggested installing a 170F unit. Problem solved.

Some of my favorite memories were teaching my daughter and her girlfriend's how to ski over 25 years ago.

@AJP0626 I would do a compression check on each cylinder first. If they're similar and all are within spec, I would start with a head rebuild, including new valves, seals, springs, and a de-carboning. We did this to a buddy's 350 Chevy, and it feels like it's putting out 300+ horses. AND, it stopped burning oil. 2Valve

Pilates, pull-ups and a peg board setup have kept me on the water, where most of my similar aged friends are plopping their tails on the couch every night.

looks like we'll need to sink our Wally Sinker course a bit lower......

@ral If I only had time to ski when I was there. It was a business trip so there just wasn't a chance to get away. The food, the wine and the coffee made a lasting impression though.

Ahh, Chile. Miguel Torres wines and Coffee with Legs. True heaven indeed.

Getting old isn't the problem. If you can stay in shape and keep skiing, you should do it. I find the problem is that a lot of my friend's are dropping out of other activities I enjoy. (Motorcycling, Target shooting, Racquetball), that I find myself not wanting to do as much of those by myself. Luckily, I have a good group of skier's still pushing the envelope. Earlier this year I got hurt pretty bad in the course. I re-habbed as hard as I could because everyone else in our club was skiing. If I had just my wife pulling me I probably would have been lazy about the re-hab, but because my other "family" was out there every day, I couldn't wait to get back on the horse. Surround yourself with like minded people in the discipline you love and you won't worry about your age.

If grease is going into the fitting, based on the pumping of the grease gun lever not feeling locked up, then most likely, the grease is escaping below the hull, where the rudder enters. Dumb question, but do you have grease in the gun?

Replace yearly independent of hours. It's cheap insurance in the long run.

52F. Spent the morning pulling up the course, cleaning off the balls. And: To say thanks for a year hitting personal bests For the memories of another season with friends, laughing and pushing each other To welcome in the coming winter and witness the season change, when the lake gets its own time to rest

As luck would have it, I got a call from a company that's installing an aeration system in our lake to reduce algae, etc. I was asked to raise our course so they could make sure not to lay their air lines near it. In talking with them, I presented this issue and they offered running a separate air line to fasten along the pvc pipe where our airline for the course sits. It would emit a constant stream of bubbles and in effect, "mark" the location for the airline. So we're going to try this along with RGilmore's solution to make it easier to grab once located. Unfortunately, we're about done skiing so will have to re-assess in the spring. Thanks everyone! 2Valves

There's one on our lake and it just sits on the lift. Never covered, just sort of rotting away. As a Vette owner, it makes me sad.

@RGilmore I like your idea. We'll need to get it a bit deeper as our previous four foot depth for the maker buoy was getting clipped by the wakeboard boats, but appreciate your thoughts. I think if we have something solid to grab below the surface, that's a big help. At present, we're just trying to grab an air hose with a long hook.

@The_MS Good advice. Most of my brilliant ideas were created after a few Budweiser's. :wink:

@markin Wish we could fill ours from the shore too, but it's a private lake with residence's houses surrounding the course area.

@fsts2k Good points. I believe the ultra low RF signals are reserved for the military, and anything above those frequencies might have limited range. The line is in about 6 feet below the surface, so the range might be suspect. The magnet idea though, I like it.

Our club has had a Wally Sinker course for a few years now and it's been great. Find the Air line, plug in the compressor and it's up and ready in 10 min. Always straight, low maintenance. The problem has been is that it's sometimes very difficult to find the air line to start raising it. We have it tied off between the boat guides and turn 3 and attached to a small duck decoy weight so it stays down. We have it's location marked with a GPS. We have an extra green marker buoy below the surface that should be visible. But if the marker buoy's dirty, the water's rough, the sun isn't at the right angle, we spend way too much time trying to find the GD thing. We were at the local watering hole last night and I got a brainstorm of an idea. lol! What if we got some type of remote controlled submarine, etc. that we could attach to the air line, so we can command it to surface, and see the air line laying on the surface. And when we're done inflating, sink it so we could ski. Then raise it again to attach the compressor to sink the course. Or.. (after a few more drinks of course), someone suggested, getting an underwater buoy with a strobe light that we could activate, remotely, to show us where the line is. We'd still have to pull it up though. I like the submarine idea better because it would actually put the air line right at the surface so we could grab it. Are we nuts? Are there remote controlled devices like this that might work? Should we keep drinking? 2Valve

Pull up bar and a peg board will give you more than enough to keep in shape.

What I love about my club is if it's raining, like 2pm on a Saturday when the lake's flat and empty, I know someone will start texting the group and say, "get your goggles on, we're going skiing" :)

I would have someone visually watching the tranny/shaft connection (under the hood) while someone else rotates the driveshaft from under the boat. My guess is that the connection isn't as tight as it should be.

Can I bring my Giant Dog?

We were skiing this past Sat morning and I was ready to jump in off the swim platform, when my buddy noticed how close to the shore we were. He said to hold on while he motored out a bit. In the 2-3 min. I was back there, my head started to get light and I got pretty nauseous. Everything was fine and I got in to ski, but it took a few minutes for my head to clear up. My fault as I was too lazy to get out of my bindings and get back in the boat. One thinks that in the open air you can't get poisoned. Obviously not the case.