chaloux

Illegal to make such a post without pics

I just wanted to give a little update on this, as I had an absolute blast over the August 26 weekend. Summary at the bottom for all my ADHD friends. I ended up heading to @swaterkd place in upstate NY to ski on Saturday and Sunday morning. Conditions were OK - it certainly wasn't hot out, but I also couldn't pass up the chance to ski behind a new SN. I also organized with @FLeboeuf to ski at one of his sites, but unfortunately timing and weather didn't work out in our favour. Right away, Jonathan was giving me advice, tips, interested in my fin settings, etc. It was hugely educational and helpful - he certainly has a way of communicating that really made sense to me. We went over a few things on the ground with a rope, and worked on my stance on the ski. Then he took me for another 6 passes after I had some time to let it all sink in and really felt like things were starting to click. Although I didn't turn any more balls at his place, I certainly felt like I had been given a wealth of information that I need to translate to my skiing. On Sunday, another skier Matt (can't remember last name, he was national champ at some point I believe?) came out and also had a huge amount of good tips and constructive criticism, and watching him and Jonathan couldn't be any more different in terms of approach. But incredible skiing all around, except from me. Hah! I took a break on Monday as my arms were killing me. On Tuesday on our way home I managed to hook up with Dan Anderson to ski his pond behind his 196 (for sale on SIA if anyone is interested). First time ever on a man-made lake! The 196 was great to ski behind, perhaps a tiny bit firmer wake at my -28/32mph than the Jonathan's 2019 SN, but otherwise felt fantastic and certainly leagues better than my '94 Sport Nautique. I'm a little bummed I didn't get to try Francis's 200 to compare nearly back to back to back, but ya can't win 'em all. The best part is while I was rounding 2 ball repeatedly at Jonathan's and then shitting the bed on my way to 3, at Dan's I turned 4 ball! It felt amazing. I think watching the California Pro and skiing a lot and having all @swaterkd tips rattling around in my head actually helped, haha. Bush's Watersports Park, a local ski site here in Muskoka, has a '23 Prostar. So naturally I wanted to ski that as soon as I could to have a good point of reference to the Nautiques. I was able to make that happen Friday morning of that same week. I don't know if it was different water or what, but everything behind that boat for that session felt like slow motion. I ran -28/32mph on my 6th pass and it felt like the easiest pass I've ever run. Everything just clicked, and I was so ecstatic. What a great way to start a Friday! Of course now I'm working on making -28/32mph consistent here at home. Let me tell you, the first set back behind my Sport was pretty eye opening! That wake is something else. Unfortunately I haven't run the pass again since that Friday, but I'm working on it, and consistently getting 4. I'm getting upset a little on my offside wake crossing but I'm confident I'm going to run it again a few times before the end of October. Once I can get it consistent, I really want to hit 34mph as that's where I should be skiing, and that will help with the wake a bit as well. I'm nursing a sensitive back, and spend a lot of time checking SIA for 196s and early 200s that are within my budget. There's an 07 with 2100 hours local(ish) to me and I am seriously tempted to make it happen, I'd just have to drop a few extra G for a ZO upgrade. Hoping to ski that boat soon. The price is right. As a quick summary: the skiing community is incredible, I am so thankful for everyone taking the time to help a course newbie out, and I had a ton of fun for a few days geeking out, while my wife paid for it all. All in all a really great extra-long weekend! Oh, and I need a new boat.

This couldn't be released at a better time for me, haha. Excellent!

Quality of announcers was great! I was streaming in a hotel room and YouTube was maxing it at 480p, was that normal for everyone else? I wonder if it will up the quality in a few days. It was acceptable but even one notch up in bitrate would have helped a lot.

Thanks Francis! PM sent.

Thanks everyone! I'll try reaching out to the Saint-Zotique guys and I'll also send you a PM @swaterkd

I'm headed to Cornwall Island for at least Saturday-Monday and would love to get a ski in. Free ski is fine. I'm happy to pay for gas/extra. I'll be hanging out alone all day while my wife is at a conference so I could drive a bit out of the area as well.

Buy a new boat. Needlessly spending money fixes nearly all my problems.

Thanks for all the replies. Finally got around to thinking about this a little more and taking some more measurements. Also found some old threads and Ed says that he has a diagram to essentially "lock" the whole course in place in relation to itself, so I reached out to him as well. I think I found part of my problem as well. One a few of the turn balls, I have river adapters going up and down course, so that ball is essentially locked. Unfortunately, while that ensures that it's perfectly in line with the boat gates, it kicked that whole ball and gate out of alignment. I've attached another (awesome) pic to help explain, lol. This is on my number 3 ball. Think about the river adapters adding extra tension and thus kicking the whole thing out of alignment. I think once I have it properly setup and locked in place, everything should be fine. It's because I have a few river adapters here and there that the course is out of alignment, and using them to align the turn balls with the gates is giving me issues with the main line. Will update with progress 🙂

I'm so glad I found this thread, somehow I missed it the first time around. Have a few Qs for Ed, glad I can now reach out to him!

It's not only boats, I believe it's all toys. A good childhood friend's family just sold their Yamaha dealership. Pre-purchased snowmobiles for the next season are called "snow-checks." Typically for a slow year they'd have around 20 snow-checks. Good years up to 100. I was chatting with the old owner recently and the new owner has one snow-check. One. Now we'll see how long it takes for prices to drop back to normal - I'm talking used here, not sure new will ever really return unless new orders drop catastrophically.

This was great! I loved that it revolves around the 21 worlds. I remember watching Jamie winning and being so happy for her! And of course Whitney's brutal fall. I will be sharing this with everyone I can.

Here's what I have that Ed sent me in PDF form, but unfortunately my installation manual is a paper copy. I suppose I could scan it if you really need, but these will help. So my eyelets are threaded - they have the loop on one end and threads on the other so you just need a washer and lock nut. I use the Quick Connect version, so stainless carabiners that clip onto the threaded eyelet. 05A - HD Course Kit - 10' and 20' pipe length kit instructions.pdf 04B2 - HD Course Kit - SpecialDutyArm Construction Instructions Quik Connect Setup.pdf

I glued all my joints together so I didn't use the bolts, but they are 1/4" as you said. I know this because I was just reading through the instructions trying to find an unrelated measurement. Are yours not stainless and that's why they need to be replaced?

Ouch.

Quick question for those using river adapters - where are you anchoring the line to? I'm currently running mine back to the previous outside gate ball from the turn ball, but I'm thinking I can run them back to the split in the main cable for the boat guide. I'd like to have less rope and crap in the river and it'd be really easy to just go from the ball on the arm to the main cable instead of boating all the way to the previous set of gates. Less to deal with. I just need to take a measurement of the split cables that go from the main to the boat guide eyelets. Unless someone happens to know that off hand, haha. And yes I tried emailing Ed but it looks like he killed the site and therefore his email when he retired, so I can't reach out to him anymore.

This is yours? Man it's even the right colour(s), and deckadence, and 2x racks. I love it. The hours don't scare me at all... I've owned classic Audis 😂 Unfortunately I'm building a very large garage with living quarters above (to store my future boat). Priorities... Ugh

https://www.ski-it-again.com/php/skiitagain.php?endless=summer&topic=Search&category=Boat_3Event&postid=66260 I want this, badly. Healthy price drop recently. Anyone know how much it costs to add a tower after the fact? I probably don't want to know...

For my 94 Sport I went with the OJ428 which I've read is very similar to the Acme 422 but a little more robust. Since there is a chance of bumping into things here and there where I'm at it made sense. If you have no risk of anything ever hitting the prop then the 422 will be fine.

Too much white, boring

Ah ok, I didn't think of that. I purchased all my own pipe (I'm a plumber) and used 3 foot sections of 2" PVC capped off as my floats. I will check that they're all still there and not water logged, I just used zip ties so it's possible they may have come off. I'll also check the risers. I used rope to connect to the 1' section of elastic, it's possible that those have stretched out and have lost their elasticity. Thanks guys, I will check next time I'm out and hopefully it's one of those.

Thanks Brennan. I'll address your points. 1. I casually say I picked up the anchor... It is extremely difficult lol. I do not enjoy doing it. Once I had it straight last year I had to do very little other than add the rubber adapters. 2. unfortunately the PVC arms bowed in the sun before installation. I try to keep the bow vertical now but when I first put it in I didn't realize that would be a problem until I saw them. 3. So I do have river adapters on the course now (or I will once I get it straight). They fixed everything up last year. And I have just eliminated them so they're not a factor. 4. My issue is looking down the gates the course is skewed. With the tension and lack of snags I'm just not sure what else to spend time on. A bit of additional info: the river is moving right now, but where I have the course the river is about 650m wide and the course is off to the side where there is little flow. Even now, I'd day less than an 1/8th mile per hour. If there is any wind the wind will push the boat vs the river. Straightness was not an issue last year, it was super easy once tensioned and didn't move. I had to mess with the river adapters, but once it was setup I basically left it alone.

I realize that this isn't necessarily boat related but it seemed better than other categories. Please move if necessary. So long story short, I put in an ez Slalom course last year with the pre gates and after tinkering with my turn ball arms (really my only gripe with the setup, I'll explain later), happily ran the course terribly all summer. My river was used as a logging river in the past so there a lot of trees and crap on the bottom. This led me to be hesitant to let the course sink over winter, so I attached empty plumbing antifreeze jugs to the ball leads. Over the winter I lost a few jugs but the course was accessible so I hooked up the balls and the course was all over the place. One ball arm broke. I fixed that and figured I just needed to retension the main line. Upon tightening the main cable, the course improved but had a big curve at gate 4 and also gate one shoved to the side. Weird. So I started investigating further and found that some of my buoy straightening lines were hooked on things on the bottom. What are buoy straightening lines you ask? Well, the ez Slalom course uses PVC pipes to space the gate buoys and the turn balls. The problem with this is that the PVC pipes inevitably warp in the sun (or flow of the river) and the turn ball may end up a few feet ahead or behind the gates. So I called up my buddy Pythagoras and added ropes from the turn ball to the next or previous gate, whichever way the turn ball needed to be corrected. I expected this to fix the problem, as if my correction lines were hooked on something and were effectively shorter, that would skew the course. So I ended up just removing all of the turn ball correction lines to eliminate that as a possibility. Unfortunately the course is still not straight. So I picked up and moved the one anchor to the point that it is actually a bit of work to lift the main cable up to surface level. It is TIGHT. But still skewed. I have checked the entire main line from pre gates to pre gates. It's not caught or stuck on anything and is tight. What am I missing?

Oxidation remover, a lot of sweat, and once finished cutting/polishing, a good wax. I had pretty bad oxidation last year and spent probably 20 hours on the visible hull cutting with oxidation remover and a rotary buffer. I don't think it had been done in several years by the previous owner. I had a fiberglass shop tell me it was basically at the point of needing to be redone, and they were surprised how great it looked afterwards (had to take it back after an initial fix after I found more problems). I just did both sides of the boat again with oxidation remover and I did the whole boat in about 6 hours yesterday. My work last year and the wax made a huge difference, and hopefully I should have even less to do next spring. 3M makes great wax, but just do some googling while you're at the store to see whatever they have will be best

Agree - I just checked my truck his because of this thread. 2018 5.3l, 3300hr, 175k km. I've changed plugs, oil changes, filter changes, thermostat... That's pretty much it. Had one coil replaced under warranty. I would imagine this engine would run easily into double this mileage/hours with basic regular maintenance.