boarditup

I have seen it before on show ski boats that perform the spin-out and around the boat tricks - the rudder is frequently over at full throttle. I believe that the area is weakened by some softer bottom hits - where the boat's rudder is stuck in the bottom and the boat is being rocked back and forth by the waves - essentially inproper anchoring by not using the stern hook. The rest of the damage comes from the power turns. Fiberglass does not like flexing or vibration that much. The nice thing is that it is repairable fairly inexpensively.

check the bolts for the tranny to the prop shaft.

I have at the INT Nationals. The borrower's ski got crushed during airline transport. He was the same size, so I let him use it. No issues. However, that is a very different circumstance than most.

I had the question asked how much do I weigh? About 250 - so I am at the far end of the chart. The ski still performs well.

Tonight I got a pull behind the MC 2014 ProStar on the 69.5" Radar Vapor Lithium with coaching by Ty. Needless to say it was a great night of skiing. Since this was my 3rd-8th passes of the year, I was surprised that I got within a couple of buoys of my PB on the demo ski setup. Regular setup is a Senate and it took a couple of passes to get the feel of the Vapor. After that, it was a very stable, forgiving ride. Well worth it if you get a chance to demo one. If you do ride one, be sure to have the coin to purchase it as you may really, really want one. Ty is one of my two favorite coaches. Very good at communicating.

DARPA is nearly complete with a small, inexpensive internal, inertial (think gyroscope) chip that does not reply on GPS for extremely precise navigation - think fractions of a meter. This frees the world up from the delicate, and likely unreliable GPS system over the long haul. Their goal is a chip small and durable enough to be shot out of a mortar for in-flight targeting - making something pretty dumb into a smart bomb. If this works out, particularly in the next 5-10 years, you will find GPS gone. However, this chip will be integrated into phones, vehicles, cameras, etc. This could be integrated into a puck placed on a ski for recording position in real time - or boat path in real time.

If you just can't wait until next week to ski with Brooks Wilson and need to get a double dose of Prostar action, then join us Friday from 4-7 at Placid Waters for a Prostar/Radar demo with world class ski coach Ty Oppenlander. Call AWS Hudsonville for more information on the evenings festivities. This is a post from Action Watersports in Hudsonville, MI. This will be at my lake in Allendale, MI. Call them at 616 896-3100. Ty O is my one of my favorite coaches, Jodi Fisher is the other.

Nothing beats a personal invitation with a look in the eye. Ask them for their support and attendance at whatever meeting there will be on the issue. Have your own gathering a half hour before the official meeting in the parking lot to get everyone on the same page.

The Porsche flat 6, without boost, can and will produce over 400 hp. To do this it spins fast, requires premium fuel, and has a lot of computing power. The torque curve is at much higher rpms that what we are used to for a ski boat. Premium fuel is an issue in a boat. Most manufacturers plan on 85 octane fuel for the boat motor. So a motor with a very high state of tune and high compression may not run well in the real world of boating. That said, when they get a CVT that will hold 350 ft lbs of torque and can be coupled to the speed control, then we have the potential of a smaller motor making it all work. Imagine a flat 4 or flat 6 completely under the floorboards of a slalom boat....

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/code-chaos_783576.html?page=1 The article above uses waterskiing as an example of absurdity in the new medical coding scheme. Seriously, medical coding for an injury from skiing on buring waterskis. It is worth the reading time.

Bench press (light weight, high reps), Lat pull downs (ceiling too low for pull ups), bicycle crunches, military press, bent over rows, flutter kicks, deadlifts, walking lunges, biceps curl, hand/forearm curls. I do this as a circuit most mornings and once more during the day. It takes about 20-25 minutes to run through three times. Each set to failure.

Yes, ski boat traffic makes a dramatic improvement in water quality. Boat traffic in general will improve water quality and oxygen saturation to a level of about 4-6 feet deep. Ski boats, with inboard propulsion, mix the water deeper - to about 8-10 feet. Heavily loaded wakesurfing and wakeboarding boats will mix the water to a depth of 15-feet. The most important attribute for mixing is the start-up, not the surface running. Slalom is the best normal watersports activity for mixing since it requires a startup at each end of the course and sometimes in the middle - when recovering a faller skier. The net effect of the ski, wakesurf, and wakeboarding boats is dramatically increased oxygen content to much more significant depths than in a still lake. For a well wind-protected lake, this can be the difference between a fish kill and a viable community of fish. Fishing from a boat does not give nearly the benefits of the towed watersports boats because they do not have the physical layout to mix water at a significat depth nor do they have sufficient number of full-throttle starts to provide any effective water mixing at depths greater than 3-4 feet. Running towed watersports boats will also dramatically improve the nutrient loading of the lake. The BOD, the Biological Oxygen Demand, will be significantly reduced. This is due to the ability of fish and other species to use the plant matter as food as they have increase oxygen to survive. It is important to have the boating activity fairly consistent during the warmest months, June-September, to avoid the dramatic stratification of the lake water. If this is done, by having sufficient structred events, the fish population will have a visible and dramatic increase in 3-5 years. Once the towed watersports activity is shut down, there will be a fish kill in about a month of intense summer heat. There is a way to artifically induce the oxygen into the water without boats. It involves piping air through diffusers placed on the bottom of the lake. Typical density is one per 20,000 surface square feet of water. This is expensive to run and a maintenance nightmare. You will find these systems in fish farms nationwide, where skiing is not used to oxygenate the water. You will find several fish farms use skiers to oxygenate the water and avoid the expense of the air diffuser system. I hope this helps. Good luck.

There is also a provision for four buoys to mark the course area for permanent courses. These are the typical red/white information cans that mark swim areas or no wake zones. The legend says "ski area." Typically they are put 50-feet aside the turn buoy line and 50-feet beyond the greens. A local notice to mariners or if in Federal Waters, a safety zone can be written to designate the area in 33 CFR and subsequently on the charts. Either the USCG or the ACOE can submit the safety zone notice for the Federal Register. PM me if you need more info. I have written a safety zone and had it published into the 33 several years ago.

You can measure it in place by tracing the path on the gunnel. There is a bit of fudge room in cable length, so if you are close, you are good. There is a bit of slack in the corners. The best method I have used to pull it through is to very securely tape a short section of rope (6") between the old and new cable and pull it through with a person helping it slide around obstructions. It sounds scarier than it is. It takes longer to disconnet and reconnect the fasteners than it takes to pull the new cable. Good luck.

As much as I hate tubes, for that size of group, it works the best. The kids get really bored and in trouble if you don't keep them engaged and busy. So, the skiing is best for a very small group - 2 or 3 at the most. Otherwise, you lose them to boredom. What I have done with middle school kids is have one lake set aside for the water tramp, paddle boards, tether ball, basket ball, a cooking fire with marshmellows and hot dogs, footballs, soccer balls, etc., and take out a group of 2-3 kids on the other lake for some wakeboarding or skiing lessons on the boom. I just keep rotating kids until the party breaks up in a few hours. The kids need about 20-minutes each of boat time including swapping skiers. Your heart is in the right place. Keep them busy! It make life a lot easier and safer.

Install and maintain a series of check dams (limestone rock with fabric underneath) to create a series of ponds in the inflow of the lake and somewhat raise the pH. This will reduce the sediment and nutrient loading of the lake. Dig deeper. The deeper the lake, the fewer the weeds. While you are at it, make sure the shallow areas have largely sterile bottoms - large grain sand or rocks. Silt and clay are ideal bottoms for weeds. Copper sulfate will prevent or stunt the growth of most weeds. It will last a while, but needs to be refreshed. Glyphosate (Round Up) works best if mixed with sand to get it to the bottom. It does not last long - it is just a contact treatment. Use early to prevent growth. If you wait until the weeds grow and then kill them the decaying plant matter becomes nutrients for the next generation. So, remove as much as you can. In general, the more you prevent nutrients from getting into the lake, the better off you are. Deeper water supports less plant life. Sand and rock bottoms are harder for plants to grow into than silts or clay.

I've had a tower on all of my slalom boats - great place for the speakers and the high point makes towing boarders or little kids a lot easier. When recreational skiing, with a full boat, the high point allows the seats to be full. I want a full 6'6" under the speakers so I don't knock my head, though. The mini-towers were useless for me.

I am somewhat unique on this board because I have a MC X-2 with 2,100 lbs of extra ballast and spend most of my boat time wake surfing.... it is because that is what my kids want to do. I have the boat so I can spend time with my kids. Once they are all out of the house, I will get a slalom boat. In every activity that becomes a competitive sport, there will be the push to the very top of performance. It goes from being a fun activity to being an obsession that you train for, engage in highly disciplined practice, develop specific equipment, and concentrate on the last 0.3% to reach the top. The early techniques and equipment fall by the wayside and the amount of time and money it takes to stay current goes way up. Consider the time and money spent on swimsuits, running apparel, and shoes for olympic athletes - in sports that require almost no equipment. When a sport becomes fully mature, you typically have stratification of the levels of the sport. You also may find a dramatic drop off in participation if the average participant is so far removed from the elites that they no longer can relate. The best sports organizations at managing this either have a massive spectator bias (NASCAR, NFL, etc.) or have a wide base of local competitions (distance running, AYSO, etc.) with little cost and barriers to entry. In our case, we have a fully mature sport with little spectator appeal with a high cost and massive barriers to entry. It is a struggle to survive other than as a small, niche sport. There is no easy answer. My daughter and I ran the Allendale Waterski and Wakeboard club last year and taught several kids how to ski, slalom, wakeboard, kneeboard, and wakesurf last year. It was expensive and time consuming, but we were happy to do it. It is up to each individual to determine for themselves ho to best enjoy and perhaps promote our sport.

I use a loop of 5mm bungee from the local surplus store. The line is 24-inches long, a simple overhand knot in the end. Feed through the buoy loop, over on itself. Knot on the bottom at the hook. Just the right amount of stretch and it is hard to hit with a boat. For waterfilled, 20-inches.

I sold EP skis a long time ago. The Wiley is the old EP binding or really similar. We would soak the binding in really hot water for 15-20 minutes and put a shoe stretcher in it to give a little more room in the toes. Let them cool down and keep the stretcher in for a day. You can do this several times to get it exactly the way you want it. I have a left big toe that needs a lot of room, so I would build up a bit of duct tape on the shoe stretcher in the toe area. Then I would heat up the area with a hair dryer on low (don't melt it, it is permanent and will then crack). Personally, I like the comfort of the new Radar boots - better control, too. But, go with what works for you.

Depends on the state. Most of the time they don't enforce most regulations because the public is not involved.

We have a volunteer fire department in the area. They train here every summer and winter. We have a first responder across the street - a husband and wife team. Also, there are 3 active volunteer firemen that have to pass the site on every call out. So, we have a lot of visibility with the medical first responders - that really helps. Finally, we are the home site for the GVSU waterski team. I give them a fresh first aid kit every season. Yes, it does cost me personally a few bucks, but I know they have some minimal equipment on the boat. Since I work from home, I end up being the first responder for most incidents - although they are rare - mainly cuts from contact with the skis upon falls. Planning and preparation are key. If you have the right equipment and know how to use it and have trained on it, you can keep calm and take control of the situation. If you are "winging it," the chance of making a bad situation worse goes up exponentially.

I am a former USCG officer and have a lot of water rescue training. I also am a USA Waterski Safety Coordinator. Nothing is a substitute for in-the-water training with a "victim" and a backboard. It is well worth the time and effort. Next season, get the crew together and have a simulated rescue and you will have a much more confident and safer crew. No surfing on the backboard, though....

I have done it. It does not have to be difficult, but it is very detailed and tedious. info@placidwaters.com if you want to talk to me directly.

Portland is my company's HQ - I get there a few times a year. From what I know of the Columbia, you would be hard pressed to make a floating course work given both current and depth. However, there are a few other bodies of water that may work. While enroute to a golf outing, I saw a dammed smaller river that looked like a great candidate. I'll see if I can get the name of it.