swbca

@tjs1295 it also not a win-win for property owners or wild life. In Northern Minnesota, the loon habitat is being destroyed because they nest close to water level. Loons are the Minnesota state bird. On our lake the wakes are sometimes washing over the top of the stone walls built around the shore to prevent erosion. Wake boats should be highly restricted in some fashion to protect habitat and lake shore property. How can this be done ? the obvious challenge.

Is there a sender's email address on your invoice that you maybe received when you ordered. Or any email address or phone number on your paypal or your credit card statement ? IMO the time and fuel you spend with fin settings with an aftermarket fin trying to get your ski to equal the performance you have with the original fin if not refundable. The asymmetrical fin from Denali is possibly an exception.

I don't know that the polypro bridle is stiff enough to actually move the handle out of the way under this sort of situation. Each fall that involves the skier in contact with a handle has many variables. I believe in most cases when a skier dives into the handle with arms or head, the handle and the skier's "parts" end up under water . . the skier is slowing down rapidly and the handle keeps going. The tension applied to the two harness legs by the drag of the handle in the water would stiffen the rope legs of the triangle improving their ability to deflect the handle away from an arm or neck if the skier lands ahead of the harness, rather than landing directly into the triangle. The end of handle could still ding the skier, but bridle could be the guardrail that prevents it from being high force unyielding collision that breaks bones.

I appreciate the innovation, and would be interested in trying the handle. However, as skier who broke his arm with a conventional handle putting me out of skiing for a season, and out of tennis for two years, I am uncertain about the tradeoff in risks with the traditional bridle versus your new concept. To be brief, when a skier falls, and his head or a hand goes into the water ahead of your handle, either end of the handle could do damage when it catches up to the skiers neck or arm. I am not certain the handle would spin away from your neck or arm fast enough to avoid injury. On the other hand, in certain falls, the two legs of the triangle on a conventional bridle can act as a guardrail to move the handle away from the neck or arm unless the neck or arm went inside the triangle as happened when I broke my arm. I don't like being a sceptic, but I wouldn't be comfortable being in the water when the open ended handle is being pulled past my hear, neck or arm. I believe there is a tradeoff of risks here and I am not sure which arrangement is safer. Has the bridle with the mesh been discussed here ? Isn't that the safest option ?

If the rope connects to the T at the same distance from the handle as the location where the 2 legs of the triangle meet, it would act the same as the conventional handle. I wouldn't want that handle coming up behind my neck when my driver is picking me up. Its a bit like a detuned grappling hook.

Another variation of edging . . Charlie Ross finishes his turn with and extreme amount of edging. His hip is inches from the water and his torso is almost upright similar to the position of alpine racers. His edging from hook up to the wake is more typical of most other great skiers. I haven't seen other pros with a turn-edging technique as extreme as his. I took some screen shots of Ross last season, but the screen shots are at our summer location and I can't remember what tournament it was. I do recall it was the tournament where he got a re-ride at 39off due to boat centering. Forget about the arms and poles, but this is similar to Charlie Ross finishing his turns.

@chrislandy pointed out the big difference. You could see in the video when holding with one hand the handle twists your wrist so the free end of handle is pointed toward the boat - much more than with the traditional triangle. It puts weird forces on your wrist and the free end of the handle is further from your body than normal when you want to grab it..

You can buy closed cell neoprene foam in a multitude of sizes. you might find the rectagular cross section yours appear to be on Amazon or ebay. Industrial suppliers have almost everything on both of these seller Or get the cross section dimensions and just to a google search for X x Y closed cell neoprene foam.

As a teenager, you take your Cypress Gardens slalom ski with adjustable bindings to the top of a very steep hill after 2 feet of snow. With wool socks you put on the ski and head down the hill. Just keep your tip up and you can imagine throwing up walls of snow with long sweeping turns. It might have of worked with more practice but too wet and exhausted after climbing up the hill for a second try.

Re Squatting - what is it ? A few top skiers ski have their knees bent at around 90 degrees except when finishing their turn. Others not so much. In this thread Squatting is something not to do. What is the difference between squatting and having your knees bent ? Freddy Winter is one of top skiers who has his knees bent more and bent longer than most other top skiers. Is that squatting ?

When Bos hits "play" can party goers hit pause for their personal viewing or does it run from start to finish for all ?

Could try it. The number of Ballers consistently watching in real time might be limited. Even many of those who want to see all of certain events, are stopping, starting, fast forwarding etc to fit into their own schedules. I think to only downside might be low real-time participation. I would be interested to see how it goes.:)

This was originally posted deep into an unrelated topic. so I copied it to its own topic. This is about installing a 35off free-skiing width marker in your boat that will show in your pylon camera videos. Since no one is keeping score, it could be helpful for free-skiing at 32 or 38 off as well. Or you could install it for another rope length. If you have a course available at all times and all wind conditions, there would be no point in doing this. *** You will be tempted to try skiing wide enough to get the rope over the floaty . . In this photo you can see that's wrong because the rope is always blown back in this phase of your turn. Concentrate on skiing wide enough to line up your view of the blue marker with the pylon . . forget about the rope. The photo was taken with the skier running a regulation course at 35off/34 to illustrate how the skier buoy, the blue marker and the pylon mounted camera are all in line. The Blue floaties are used instead of tape markers on the boat gunnels because they are high enough to appear in your slalom videos taken with your pylon mounted camera. Using tape markers is a common practice but you can only see them in your videos if you are using a wide angle lens . . . These floaties are high enough to be in your video using a "normal" focal length like with this skier video using a cell phone zoomed to be "normal" equivalent. The PVC is screwed to the face of the side pocket of our ProStar 197 with a standard PVC plumbing fitting that has a flange with 2 screw holes for this type of use. On this boat I set the screws in epoxy because the side pocket is made with a soft fiber board. The PVC ends at the yellow line, so the foam floaty has the flexibility to fold over when the rope drags across it every time your skier has pulled wide to drop at the end of a pass. You can slide the markers off of the PVC when for a boat cover or other circumstances. The calibration instructions that came with my OffCourse system can be used to locate these markers in your boat. Use your preferred rope length when using their method of marking the location. Microsoft PowerPoint - OffCourse" User's Manual English V4.2.pptx (rodicsinnovation.com) (edit) or take a look at the templates that @BraceMaker posted below.

When you cook bacon so your wife won't notice the smell of the stuff you are using to refinish your swim platform in the basement bathroom with the bath fan on.

"Ski Season in Coming" Right On . . . were headed to Aspen . . . then to the lake in May

My cutting up, shaving, filling, recoating resins goes back in Water Skiing history to when Warren Witherell gave 3 of us Minnesota Boy's division skiers new Northland Warren Witherell signature slalom skis. Then he proceeded to cut 2"off the back of all of our brand new skis with a carpenters saw a few weeks before the National Tournament. Stock skis left a lot of room for improvement in the 70'-90's so being able to make them better was a competitive advantage. I ended up with Regional records and National titles largely because of my endlessly chasing better ski performance. Still doing it today but modern skis provide a much better starting point. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My starting point on the last several skis I have worked on is to reduce the size of the bevel by about 30% on the last 18" of the ski and have the bevel meet the bottom of the ski with a very sharp edge. The rest will be done by carefully/slightly detuning the sharp bottom edge with on the water testing. If the edge is soften too much, it can be reversed by flat sanding the bottom a few strokes with 600 wet and dry paper glued to a 1x2 wood block. Very similar to practices used in tuning snow ski edges. The irregularities in this photo are reflections.

You know you're a very old water skier when you owned Northland snow skis and Northland slalom ski at the same time. and Warren Witherall cuts 2" of the back of your Northland ski a week before you head off to the 1964 Nationals in Massachusetts. (and uses the same saw to move the fin slot forwards)

@Brownie_09 You also asked "What do you think it'll take to break the 2.5@43, 36mph record? That been discussed in the past on this forum. Some say it will take something like, "If you can do 2.5 just keep going until you have done 6. Other's say it will never happen. I am in that camp. Edit . . . I was thinking your question was about running 6 balls. 3 balls has a much better chance of happening, which was your question.

That's a memorable photo! Thanks for sharing it.

@S1Pittsis this endorsed by your 'honey' ?

When you have been the only skier using your course on your lake for 20 years and the neighbor ladies ask "what rope length was that?" when you pull up to their dock to say "hi" after a set.

When you take your slalom ski all the way from Minnesota to Acapulco Mexico to take a 5 minute ride behind a Hotel boat with 3 foot rollers in Acapulco bay

If I recall correctly @Gloersen mentioned this item on this forum 2 years ago. I bought one and became proficient standing on it for a minute or so on alternate feet. As advertised, it work muscles in your legs and core to maintain balance. However, like most long term skiers one of my hips is over-used and the Slack Block was uncomfortable when on my left foot . So I converted mine to a two foot exercise which simulates being on a slalom ski and provides a new range of balance movements compared to the original. It adds front and back weight transfer motion at the same time as maintaining your left right balance. The foam is velcroed to the block, so moving it from the original block to the the 2 foot block was simple. The best thing about it is its availability in your home. Mine stands up in the corner of our kitchen, so I can do the balance activity while coffee maker is brewing every morning and while watching the morning news on TV. The wider back end is to match my rotated rear foot binding on my ski. The rotation helps with the bad hip on this block as it does on the ski. I recommend the original product with or without the modification.

I'll check back next summer. In the meantime I will observe Adam Cord's advise from a couple of days ago on this thread. "Ignore anyone who tells you not to modify your ski. Take it from someone who has been modifying skis for a long time...everyone thinks you're crazy when you do it, that's just part of the deal" I have said a few times this is a Hobby experiment on a ski that otherwise had no value to me and has virtually no value on Ski It Again.