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@jmoski Yes, I way laying under the dashboard for about an hour installing an updated Perfect Pass system and then wire tying all the old and new tangled cable bundles under there. The fuel smell was so bad up there I was starting to have weird day dreams. The leak is also bad enough that the 40x20x16 storage garage smells like gas when I go in there. I have some time tomorrow to dig into this problem. Having the tank full will be inconvenient assuming I have to take something apart. I will bring a bunch of my 6 gallon fuel cans to siphon out the fuel if needed.

@deke I did some testing with rare earth magnets for attaching buoys to sub buoys without going swimming. The concept is good but it would be hard to get to 400 pounds with a magnet assembly that is light and small. Plus it all has to be water sealed because they fail with corrosion. there may be some industrial magnet solution that would work. My knowledge is just with generic rare earth magnets.

@BraceMaker If the cable clamps don't calibrate with torque setting consistently, this looks like a good alternative.

@Andre Fuel Outlet, I suppose that's the outlet on the fuel tank ?

Bought the boat in October; it was a warm day here Monday so I went to the boat storage to check it out. The boat has a fuel leak somewhere and I couldn't see anything under the engine cover. Where would you look first and how to get access. When I put the boat in storage I added fuel and fuel conditioner, unintentionally filling to the max. 2 weeks later the fuel level had dropped below site when I opened the fuel cap. At the time I figured it was a problem with the filler connections above the fuel tank.

@2Valve Fantastik ! ;) I will give it a try to see how it compares to DAWN, the stuff used on the wildlife after oil spills.

@buoyboy1 This isn't a cable course. It has individual anchor lines that are pulled over at an angle to lower the course. The horizontal network of ropes connects at 44 feet above the bottom. Pulling the anchor lines 26 feet horizontally lowers the course 6 feet. Below is my first 1975 installation on a different lake where the horizontal lines were all at the sub-buoys. I am going to try calibrating the safety-break on the cable that goes to the winch with torque values on a cable splice. I just got a 1/4" pound-inch torque wrench to test and set this up.

So I have seen all the YouTube videos of guys cleaning their bass boat carpets. Many products were used in these videos but I don't know what really works. Last October I bought a 2004 Prostar 197TT . . The boat is almost like new except the carpet is original. The boat will be coming out of storage in a couple of weeks and I want to clean the light grey carpet that has several oil spots . . . if that's possible. The bottom is better looking than the carpet

@BraceMaker The Sensor After looking at your post, the winch will be mounted on a vertical plate with bolts and rubber bushings. It will be mounted so it doesn't move down but will compress the bushings at the bottom edge of the winch body when there is sufficient downward tension on the cable. A microswitch will be activated when the bottom edge of the winch presses in towards the mount plate, but with a physical stop so the switch doesn't get crushed. The email alert Our local sheriff has relaxed enforcement of state DNR rules and there is no other jurisdiction. Without a permit the Sherriff allows submersible courses as long as they aren't UP from sunset to sunrise. This is a second home so I need to know if the course comes up accidentally when we aren't around. We have a system that runs HVAC, Security, Lighting with unlimited auxiliary inputs and programmable conditions. Email alerts can be sent for any event. The microswitch on the winch has been assigned a sensor ID that is programmed to send us an email when the cable has low tension or normal course-down tension. I programmed this stuff remotely last night . . that was the easy part. Thanks for your assistance.

I appreciate you applying your skills and effort on my behalf but their is a logistical problem with the break-away near the winch. If the break-away is in the middle of the cable, I can fix it in a half hour. I wind out an extra 50 feet of cable from the winch, Retrieve the 2 ends with my grappling hook, add temporary floats to the ends, pull the ends together and replace the link. If the cable has been pulled out of the pipe, my techniques for getting a cable back into the pipe don't work. (cant blow a pull string through a wet pipe floating in the lake). Water pressure would maybe work with fittings made to connect a water hose into the same end of pipe with the end of the cable and a piston fitted to the pipe interior to pull the cable. I like the pressure sensor concept for monitoring . . I will keep working on it.

@BraceMaker Interesting . . The pulley idea looks very interesting but creates a problem. I am concerned about an anchor line from a boat. When a boat finds it is hung up on something, they will probably maneuver the boat, or forcefully wind the anchor to get un-hung. If the release is on shore, that could end up pulling the 250 foot pipe protecting the cable out into the lake, and may not release the boat from the our cable. I expect that a break-away in the center that has no sizable hardware at the break point, would allow an anchor line or anchor to slip off the end of the cable. But here's another design question and design seems to be your expertise This is a second home, so we are frequently away. All critical functions at his home are monitored with programming conditions to send us an email alert identifying problems. I have been trying to think of the most simple method to detect when the course is "up" based on low cable tension near the winch. All I need is a contact closure or opening when the cable is at low tension. We are under legal requirements to never have this course UP over-night or lake property owners would have cause to take action with the Sheriff. So I need to know if the course is UP due to some mishap. I don't want to interfere with the cable winding in neat layers with something that inhibits the cable from moving laterally near the winch drum. So then I was thinking of some type of pressure or magnetic switch function that could detect when the winch mounting is stressed by high cable tension or not. If the winch-mount was spring-loaded and hinged to allow enough travel for a magnetic security contact, this would be the most compact method to input this change of state into our processor. I would just need to make it weatherproof. Any other ideas ?

@Jody_Seal I will contact Ron. Thanks

@mwfillmore HDPE ski rope is good in water for a very long time, if not forever. (my previous slalom course was in the water for 30 years) I have some new bulk ski rope from Masterline. I think I counted 15 filament sets in the rope. A bundle of 4 sets broke a 420 pounds in a single test. With some testing while wet after many load/offload cycles I might be able to provide a sufficiently constant breaking point. A better idea ? Calibrating a tensile safety break based on a product breaking probably isn't the best concept for a cheap solution. Using a stainless cable clamp to splice cables end-to-end, a failure value could be calibrated by the torque value on the two nuts. This would be less likely to change in value over a long series of load and unload cycles because no materials are being stretched to their limit repeatedly. Thanks for everyone's input.

@BraceMaker This illustration is from my original article in the Water Skier magazine with "how-to" instructions on the world's first submersible course. (Mike Suyderhoud apparently produced and patented the second submersible course) On this illustration, if a boat's anchor line puts 100 pound of lateral or vertical pressure on the 700 foot cable, it increases the end-point tension on this cable by several hundred pounds. I want the cable to break at 400 pounds so it doesn't pull components in the slalom course out of position. Someone is going to wonder Why this design ? I want a course that can be wound up or down from shore, 700 feet away from the course. My friend Lance in Minnesota uses several hundred feet of plastic tubing to inflate 42 foot long bladders inside aluminum pipes for each set of buoys (straighter than PVC pipes). It was more expensive to implement and required a very long series of tweaks to make the deflation of the bladders reliable. His course has been reliable for many years and sinks to the bottom of the lake (45 feet down) when he lets the air out. My course is low tech and was trouble free for 30 years the last time I built this design. On the 1975 original installation, the course went up and down with a button on the dashboard of our boat.

@BraceMaker if a 700 foot line has 300 pounds of tension, a momentary100 pound lateral conflict has the leverage to increase the tension by a more than 100 pounds.

I installed a course through the ice in January and will be adding the submersion feature in May. I have 700 feet of 3/32 cable that pulls the course down and is suspended across a valley with matching flotation to keep it from sagging or floating. This is a repeat of a submersible design I did on another lake many years ago that worked well for three decades until we moved to another lake. In the event someone catches this cable with a boat anchor, I need a break-away feature to keep this from wrecking the course. I intend to put the "weak link" in the middle of the cable. Normal tension for winding and holding the course down is around 300 lbs. I want the break away to happen around 400 lbs. I have been testing commercial cable ties with a tensile scale. 4 wraps with a 50 pound tie binding 2 stainless steel fittings breaks at 400 pounds. This is consistent with the fact that most commercial ties break at 2x their specified strength. But I don't think cable ties will be reliable with frequent release and reload cycles that are within 75% of their break point. I think their break point will decline with constant reloading. Any idea on another material to use as a break-away link that won't deteriorate with load cycles. For example a small high density poly rope that breaks at 400 pounds would probably be better, but I am just guessing.

Maybe this has been answered . . this their promo video.

@19skier There is no singe best choice but I am also skiing tournaments at 30mph this year for the first time. When skiing at 34 mph, I completed 35off 7 tournaments in a row. I weight 170 at 6-0 and will be using a 68" D3 ION. That may seem like a long ski but Nate Smith weighs less and uses a 67 ION at 36mph. He uses a larger ski for his size compared to most other skiers and he holds the world record. What Boots? When I asked this forum about what boots to get after not skiing for a while I was warned away from starting with a shell. That transition is much bigger than changing a ski. Sometimes experienced skiers can't even get out of the water or make a single pass through the course when they switch to a shell boot. I was advised to use something similar to what I had been using before until I got my ski-legs back.

Decades ago, I was wishing I had this machine, but I was thinking ice cubes. Mount a big ice cube maker under the front deck to build a reserve supply to fuel the slalom guns. A few weeks ago I asked the developer about ice cubes . . they had thought of it but it was too complicated to keep cubes on hand in water skiing weather.

@TEL As you know skiing in the course has different demands than free skiing. When you call on your slalom course skills, the wrong hand is likely to come back intermittently. Let us know how long it takes for the "correct" grip to become comfortable in the course. I have to do the same thing . . when the ice goes out. It will be interesting to hear out it goes for you.

@BraceMaker If you take average power rates and average gasoline rates, is one more cost effective for the end user in a car or boat ? I understand that fuel costs are very volatile but conceptually, is there a consensus that electric is cheaper per mile ? Separate question, which has the most efficient production and delivery considering the cost of infrastructure build-out and infrastructure operation and delivery costs ?

@Wayne I thought @Rednucleus made a good joke. I didn't really think it would work, but I suppose the voltage output could be adjusted by a serial array of solar panels.

@Rednucleus GREAT IDEA . . . you were being facetious, but a solar Bimini top might give you a couple of hours per week of electric skiing. The solar powered boat lifts attenuate the charge rate on the battery to avoid overcharging.

Better jack up the folks in charge of the electric grids, or they will be telling folks they can't charge their boats and cars this week because brownouts are expected with a heatwave causing record residential air conditioning loads. Ilon Musk says the country isn't preparing for the planned growth in electric cars. We have fabulous ingenuity for planning increases in electric demand and bureaucratic stagnation for increasing supply. Maybe Correct Craft should work on a dual fuel boat so it can burn fossil fuel when electric is being rationed, which can be at any arbitrary time in some states.

@Horton I'm hoping that correcting my grip will offset the additional of 35 years of age this coming season . . . can always dream. If you wish I can clean up the original high resolution scan and send you a download link. I did a 5 minute cleanup for the photo you see, but the high res image hasn't been cleaned up. If you would rather wait for the better version of Cindy, let me know . . it would be later today, or when ever I hear from you. I don't have any other water ski photography of known skiers. In 1996 I bought a Nikon 35mm scanner and scanned all the worthwhile negatives and slides going back to my Dad's stuff from 1950. I am always surprised that no one is ever curious how I have "new" looking photography from 50-70 year old pictures (when posted on facebook etc). 35mm negatives deteriorate badly, so scanning the old negatives I had 25 years ago, couldn't be done today. The best accidental archiving of photography is from contact prints sitting around in attics. A 100 year old black/white print from a 4x5 negative is better than any 35mm negative or transparency.