chaloux

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.

I'm happy with my 94 Sport Nautique for now, but am definitely looking to upgrade at some point primarily as a skier. But it's been a fantastic boat for a young family that in general is pretty tough on equipment, no matter how hard I try 😅 At the time it was also one of the only boats I could find that wasn't over 35k (early 2020). Still, I've put 2-4k/yr into it undoing some bullshit that POs have done - fiberglass work, new teak platform, fixing small broken stuff, upholstery work, stereo, updated PP, steering cable etc. It'll be extremely well gone through by the time I'm ready to move on. It'll probably be the best the boat has been since new right before I sell, lol. The wake isn't the greatest for slalom, but it's passable. The true beauty of the boat is its versatility. Tubing (gasp!), wakeboarding (also gasp!), dogs, general screwing around... It does it all quite well and I don't have to worry about keeping a $100k boat pristine, yet I still keep spending money trying to get it there lol. Maybe when my youngest is 11 instead of 8 that will be an easier feat. If I was to do it again, primarily as a skier, I'd find a swapped ski Nautique with Zero Off and sacrifice a bit of versatility as my interim solution until I committed to a new ProStar etc.

Oh come on, just look at Zara's post history. It's not that hard to figure out that they're not some shill. This is the closest I could come to finding anything about Freddie reacting. Ironically it was your comment @rockdog that made me go through Zara's post history and find this in the original thread from last year, @Horton posted it. https://www.instagram.com/tv/CeIICWbACEn/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= I think we can assume that this is not what got Freddie banned.

I think you actually maybe meant to quote Stathis 😆

Thank you for that summary. Specific to Freddie, all we know is that according to Freddie himself in the podcast, he had an emotional response to the situation that you described. But what exactly that means... We're not sure

Seems like if there were that many technical difficulties with reviewing, a compromise would be to have him re-run the pass?

I would love to know what actually happened. Jody it seems like you have more details? Freddy was so careful with his words that I can only speculate.

That's what I was trying to figure out. From what I can gather, in the heat of the moment he probably said something like, "are you effin stupid, I made 6 ball!" And Nautique said no masters for you.

Ok, what did I miss? What did Freddie do after judges decided no on 6 ball @39.5? Is there video anywhere? Sucks that he won't be in the Masters this year.

I've decided on a 21+ ProStar someday but damn, the TXI price point sure is nice https://www.ski-it-again.com/php/skiitagain.php?endless=summer&topic=Search&category=Boat_3Event&postid=66444

AI will figure it out

Huh, I guess so. I would just think for keeping them up off the floor of the boat, minimizing loose objects in the boat, extra walking space etc (although I realize not a lot of walking is happening behind the driver). But I'm also thinking about my family being in the boat so any freed up floor space it's valuable to me.

Love it. It's like my course - on a river, on a reserve, with only pontoon and fishing boats, and it's being one of only three year round residents with no public launch. The only problem is I'm the only serious skier! Kids are getting there though...

On a related topic, I just learned that I can buy a new custom built platform for my 94 Sport Nautique. www.correctcraftfan.com/store/ has one that is jatoba wood vs teak, and www.teakworldenterprises.com/collections/swim-platforms lists having a teak option for the Sport. Any opinions on jatoba vs teak? Price is very similar. My platform is dead, missing some pieces, screws starting to poke through from too much sanding from previous owners.

It blows my mind how many new(er) PS on SIA have no ski racks. Wut. Seems like a major oversight when ordering. I mean, i know my boat doesn't have any either, but it's old and that wasn't an option. Seems like a no brainer.

I'll be paying attention to this one, I wanna know too!

No pics of the new boat!?

Looks good now.

Yeah super wonky on mobile right now.

While not exactly the Midwest, winter here north of Toronto really used to get to me. I picked snowboarding back up and that helped a lot. Moved to the bush, got a hot tub, that also helped a lot. We're in the process of building a garage where I'm hoping to have a workout/project space (and boat storage 😀) as we have no extra room in the house at all. This winter has been total crap though - we're either getting 3 feet of snow in a few days, or it's -30°C, or it's raining. It's been all over the place and hard to get into any sort of rhythm.

I think the point is that we're all hosers, "native" or not

Lol - Toronto tomato Toronto potato. Whatever. There are a few courses up in Muskoka. I have one, another on go home Lake (Rob C), a few on Muskoka, one on long Lake in Bala, Bush's, Faerie Lake in Huntsville, a private one on swan Lake just outside of Port Carling, and I'm sure many, many more. Any "sites"? Bush's would be the best bet. But I have a barbeque and a hot tub, and I'm happy to tow 🙂