Cnewbert

@Chris Rossi first season of Spraymakers was great and you and Trent hit it out of the park with season 2. My wife and I haul our boat to our favorite lake two hours round trip 5 days a week, and we listen to Spraymakers on the way down each and every single day. It doesn't matter how many times we've heard a particular episode, we always get something new out of it with each repeat listening. Thank you guys for your invaluable contribution to this sport!

@MitchellM thanks! We stayed on the south bank Saturday for the finals… it was much cooler there than Thursday when we were on the main drag. Great event! Sorry we didn’t connect somehow.

If Nate has run -41 150 times, what is the most number of -41s his closest competitor has run? All other contemporary Open level tournament skiers combined? Everyone today has access to the same equipment, boats etc. as Nate, so that variable can be eliminated.

Between the prelims and the finals, Nate totaled 7 more buoys than his closest competitor. That's dominance.

@Cooper_Trelawney Thanks and it was awesome to be sure! We did have one moment of sheer panic on the drive down Saturday morning for the finals. We saw the taco food truck broken down on the side of the freeway! Thank heavens it was just a blow out and they made it to Sunset Lakes in time for lunch. Close call!

Thomas Degasperi Regina Jaquess Regina Jaquess Freddy Winter Will Asher Regina Nate Smith Regina Freddy Winter Manon Costard Jamie Bull Manon Costard Whitney McClintok Rini (finals, just two days after horrific crash) Nate Smith The GOAT (Regina)

@Horton I’m not sure what changes you made, but I can no longer send a message to another baller. After I input the recipient it disappears as soon as I try to enter text in the main body. Also, an entire thread as disappeared. There was a thread titled “Worlds” are something close to that concerning the current world championship. When I clicked on it yesterday to read the new posts I got a screen saying the page I am looking for no longer exists. Did you delete the thread or has something gone amiss? Thanks.

@ETskier thanks as well. All sounds great. But if we end up with just ice cream tacos, we’ll be happy!

@ScottScott @Martin thanks!! Tacos and ice cream… we’ll be good!

On another subject… are there food trucks on site and if so, is the food pretty good? We’re heading down tomorrow and wondering what we should bring with us. Thanks.

@swbca I believe the Orbit is the latest version, which is what the OP is looking for.

As a public service announcement for all out of staters coming to the Worlds, here is a list of a number of excellent Florida brewed IPAs that are widely available and that have done very well in our weekly Battle of the Beers. We can recommend all of them, though not necessarily in one night: Jai Alai 7.5% Oyster City Apalach 6.9% La La Land 7% Ursa 7.1% Hurricane Reef 6.5% Sailfish Sunrise City 7% Rome City 5.8% Mad Manatee 6.5% Fancy Papers 6.5% and of course… Florida Man 8.5%

I’m a big fan of the FMS as well. Ours is very accurate and matches the analog gauge quite closely. Since we ski on a public lake and I know from experience we’ll burn 0.7 gallons getting back to the ramp from the far shore, we can ski with confidence even when running low on fuel as we know at any time exactly how much is left the tank and how much we need to make it back.

Just thinking out loud here. Since -43 is a physical impossibility for skiers with insufficient reach to get around a turn at that rope length regardless of their skill, I wonder if the next step beyond a completed pass at -41 should instead be -41 at increased speed, upping it maybe 1 or 2mph.

@Broussard well, if that's the trade off, I'd take it 8 days a week. I've never owned a boat or any kind of vehicle with a mechanical recliner lever that ever broke, needed servicing or replacing. Maybe I'm just easy on these, but I haven't ever found them subject to failure. For the most part it's a set it and forget it adjustment. And 5 years from now, 10 years... whatever... if I had to remove the seat to fix it, it would be a small price to pay for the agony I avoided. My ankles would agree. ;-)

We absolutely love our ‘20, but if the ‘21 comes with the driver’s seat recliner lever on the right side of the seat where it’s completely out of the way, instead of sticking out on the left where it protrudes into an already narrow step through space and lies in wait for unsuspecting ankle bones, I’d order the new one in a heart beat! I’ve cracked my ankle painfully on this torture device more times than I can count. I’m not suggesting that whoever decided that was the best side of the seat to put this lever should be drawn and quartered. That might be somewhat excessive. But I’d love to know the thought process for not putting it on the right, accessible yet completely out of harm’s way. Seriously though, it is the one and only thing we don’t love about this fantastic boat!

@MDB1056 Seth was also in the booth first thing Sat morning and he provides excellent insight and analysis there as well.

Wow! I had no idea water skiing was so dangerous, but these comments are disturbing. It’s got me thinking I need to take up a safer sport, safer than slalom skiing. I’m thinking bull riding.

GoPro Hero 9 plus Ski Doc. Does not skip any frames. Max zoom is 2x, but it is digital zoom, not optical, so resolution declines. Zoom is also limited by the skier skiing out of frame at apex due to mechanical lag of the rope directed mount following the skier, so 2x is not suitable in most cases and a lesser zoom ratio must be used.

Watson Teak oil works great if you don’t want to bother mixing.

“I don’t need no stinking transom straps!”

@Horton

If your boat is on a trailer with some space around it on one side at least, and you have some spare rope laying around, you can do this empirically and easily. Run a rope from the pylon straight back maybe 40 or so feet. Doesn’t matter. Anchor it somehow… stake, weight, whatever. That’s centerline. Then run a second rope parallel to the CL rope 37 1/2’ away. That’s your buoy line. Then attach your ski rope at whatever length you are interested in checking, add whatever you want for your arm/body extension, swing it out to the buoy line for each different length, and mark the gunwale with tape where the ski rope is for that length. Only takes 15 minutes maybe. One thing to note is that the ski rope is not laser straight from the pylon to the skier when the skier is at apex. There will always be a bow in the rope and the skier will likely be higher on the boat and wider on the course than indicated by gunwale marks. That just means if you make your mark you’ve got a little width to spare. (That’s why you can’t zoom in too tight with camera tracking devices that use the ski rope to track the skier. The skier will ski out of frame at apex if zoomed too tight because the skier is ahead of the rope at the pylon so the camera points behind the skier, not directly at him.)

Be patient. He’s in Japan and maybe not monitoring BOS frequently.

@BS74 I’d be surprised if it had a permit. I recall it was floating. PM MillerTime38. He would know the details.