RGilmore

If you look closely at some of The Waterski Broadcasting Company's videos you can catch a glimpse or two of the system they use. It looks like a homemade version of a "Steadicam" used by commercial filmmakers, and their videos seem pretty flawless to me.

You could go the way Ed Hickey does - last time I checked he's got a full-time driver on his staff. As a bonus, that driver is Wim DeCree.

Actually, I just found these guys, and I am very impressed by their website. https://www.nationalbiminitops.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIi-T00K2q6wIVBBx9Ch0EEwA8EAAYASAAEgLtvfD_BwE Not only do they build specifically for make and model, but even differentiate by year. For my boat (2008 SN LE) they offer three different heights, and four different fabric choices, each with MANY colors. Plus, their pricing is all spelled out to the penny, and a live chat opens up when your first enter their website, in case you have any questions. Sorry to all you guys who love your Tower Biminis, but THIS company really knows how to help a customer like me find what he's looking for. Good chance they'll be getting MY business

@KRoundy - I saw those three photos, but when I wanted to find out about ordering one this is all there seemed to be: https://towerbiminis.com/product-category/biminis/nautique/ If you can find a link to the ordering information for a deck mounted 196 bimini, that I could use.

When checking out the Tower Bimini website, the Nautique section appears to be almost exclusively for boats with wake-boarding towers. I'm looking for a standard Bimini top, and I don't see anything on Tower's site I would want on my 196.

Maybe some simple math could help paint the "new ski design vs. BNG dilemma" in a different light. Suppose there are six different ski design aspects that significantly affect how a ski will perform - for example, Bevels, Rocker, Perimeter (shape), Wrap material, Core material, and Tunnel configuration. Further assume each aspect has six distinctly different forms - for example, Flat bottom, partial concave Tunnel, full-concave Tunnel, concave-with-rails Tunnel, variable-width Tunnel, and V-stepped Tunnel. So for this thought experiment there are only six design aspects to consider, and each aspect has only six possible configurations The total number of possible iterations of your new ski would be 6! (six factorial), which is 6x5x4x3x2, which equals 720. So there would be 720 different possible forms of your new ski - IF there were only six design aspects to consider. In reality, there are many more to consider, AND there are all kinds of hybrid forms of each aspect. There literally is not enough time in one ski designer's entire lifetime to try every combination possible, which means there may very well be MANY design changes yet to come in the impossible quest to find the "perfect" ski. See, I told you the math would be simple.

Famous particle physicist Frank Oppenheimer often said "Docendo discimus" which is Latin for "the best way to learn is to teach".

@Justin_C nailed it. Set and measure dft with the tail cap off.

@UWSkier - These days most ski rope and handle makers either have larger end loops as standard, or offer them upon request, making handle changes easy no matter what type of guard you're using.

More cowbell. ("cowbell" being a euphemism for driving your inside hip forward over your front foot)

There is a 3rd way, but it will require a major change to your baseline technique. You need to quit skiing with your head and upper body, and learn to ski with your hips. BTW, remember, this is just one man's opinion. You don't get real far up on the boat, and you don't generate a lot of angle on your turn-in (or at the finish of any of your subsequent turns). Because you don't start very far up on the boat you can't generate very much speed in your cuts. You DO appear to be strong as an ox, but angle and speed beat strength all day long. The primary "reason" for these issues is that you tend to turn your ski with your head and shoulders, instead of your hips (COM). Look at the position of your head and your shoulders at the completion of your turn - you literally THROW your head to the inside of the turn trying to make the ski finish. Compare that to Cole Giacopuzzi in the video below. Take particular note of how tightly he snaps around the turn and how much angle he generates before hook-up. Then notice how he keeps his head and shoulders upright and level, and lets his hips and lower body do all the work. Hanging onto the rope with straight arms and just leaning your body over sideways like a falling tree WILL make the ski turn, but it's a very slow, large-radius path, and the boat easily catches you before you can really build enough angle. Even with driving your head and shoulder to the inside, you simply don't have enough time to finish into the required angle/speed. So when the boat catches you, you haven't really finished the turn and your speed is too slow, making it impossible to accelerate enough to "swing up" on the the other side. You need cross-course angle and speed to the center of the wake if you want to get high up on the boat, and you're simple not getting enough of either.

A friend of mine had to get snipped twice. They discovered there was a third "micro" vas deferens that was still releasing swimmers after many months and several tests.

Wow. No other word for that level of skiing. Just wow.

@Horton - Opinions vary. Right or wrong, the reason we over-inflate is to slightly force the balls into a spherical shape before removing enough air to make them soft again. Otherwise they come out looking distorted and NOT spherical, as seen in the above video. I would contend that any buoy incapable of surviving slight, temporary over-inflation is going to have real trouble handling the much greater forces of being struck and skied over during a season or two of use

The primary trick with preparing ANY brand of ski buoy is to overinflate them and then let them sit for a few hours (overnight is even better). Now, when you let enough air out to get them down to tolerance they are much softer, and the lumpy "fold" line from shipping should be long gone.

As has been pointed out by others, this is not the first foray into ski manufacturing for Kris LaPoint. In fact, he was building skis as far back as the 1970s, when he acquired the old Hexcel molds and laid up slalom skis in his garage. They were white, with a Psychadelic "LaPoint" silk-screened on the top - called the "Ajax". They had a honeycomb aluminum core and could hardly hold a screw, so the bindings were adjusted with shoelaces running through eyelets in the rubber wraps. I haven't been able to find an image of that early LaPoint ski, but here's a photo of the old Hexcel slalom, complete with lace-up bindings.

Back in 2009, Chris Rossi answered some of your questions in an article entitled "Keys To A Great Offside Turn" - you can find this article by searching http://www.slalomguru.com Here's a small excerpt: "Let the ski go where it wants once you release your hand. This sounds easy, but most skiers don't allow this to happen. You almost never fall coming into a buoy so go ahead and trust to let yourself lay out more. The additional ski edge angle produced by this will help to both support you and help to make a tighter, more controlled turn. "The trick here is to feel full extension in your reaching arm. Think about skiing away from the handle so far that you can feel it in your shoulder. "Turn when you feel that the ski is the farthest point away from you. This is the apex. Don't worry about where the buoy is. Remember, the buoy is not the point where we HAVE to turn, it's the earliest place that we CAN turn."

Wow. $30+k. We have the same boat, minus the Rev. R and he Bimini. Bought for $24,800 in winter of 2010 from a dealer in Wisconsin. So, while it's not the biggest ROI ever it's still nice to know we probably haven't lost money on our investment.

I like your easy to read go/no-go color bands.

About that fourth photo above, I'd love to go through that shop. Seeing that Saucier slalom and those 70's Scorpion snowmobiles, "I'll take cool old inventions from Minnesota for $800, Alex!"

Ah. That explains it.

You don't see a lot of left-handed slalom courses out there - especially on a private ski lake.