A_B

If you ski and you have two painful grapefruits hanging later in the day, you know it was too early....

@Wish cardinal rule of investing, never, and I say never tell your wife when an investment appreciates!! If I have told my wife 100 times that our investment account was up, she has 1000% of the time said Sell! She babbles something about it isn't a gain until you sell it..... women!

@6balls We can tell our wives that our ski boats are investments now!

I think it would be virtually impossible for the average skier to not lean and resist until the wake. You would have to carry enough speed through the turn to get the ski under the line and hold this position in “coast” mode up to the first wake and then take the load from the boat. Can you say Yard Sale?? The only time you see this even close, maybe in the white water, is when our elite skiers are on uber short line and stick their turns with speeds us mortals would be soiling our swim trunks with and they get hit by the boat in the whitewater and they still maintain their stack into the wake. My back hurts just thinking about it. Stick to what Horton said. Hold your offhand at your waist until the ski is around and under the rope and then ski your hip and hand to the handle or pull the handle in to your off hand. Reaching across the body is not ideal nor is pulling it into your chest and then down. That is eat slack mode only. AB

If the Pro is 20% better (my estimate) than a Lithium and that is 20% better than the alloy, you would likely feel a quicker response in turning and edge control. It will be lighter and less beef in the tip area if you pop the handle and hit the tip it will likely crack, so that is a consideration. I have hit my Pro twice and got small cracks that had to be patched both times. I have hit my Lithium skis numerous times and nothing happened. I assume alloy is even more durable. Just my 2c.

My friend is going to list his 6.1 on SIA soon.

A lot of safety equipment stores stock them as well. I ran into an overstock situation at a local store a few years back and bought 3 dozen yellow kevlar for something like $3 per pair. I stopped wearing when I had to go Clincher style gloves but my future son in law has just about gone through the pile at this point.

The 196 is a great hull. It doesn't need moveable weights in the boat to make a great wake and to handle properly. But I grew up skiing on late 70's ski boats which now are used for wakeboard boats. Maybe those old boats taught us how to keep the ski on edge through the wakes? The 196 is holding value for a reason!

Wileys?

Were you on a regular width ski before? The wider skis don't need as much power to get up on and will load a lot more if given too much speed. Sometimes new bindings are stiff and harder to point the front toe down so the ski plows more as well.

Looks like Horton Mini-me

Still using my Straightline Ultra Vest. I think the flotation is in good shape but I don't float as high in it as I once did. :(

Hmm, I need to order some skier buoys to replace some spares of the 5-year old Wallys I have now.. Note: only a couple have developed a leak and I used my spares up. 5 years! color is still pretty good.

We have used Accufloat for 35 years with a big boat anchor at one end about 200' of stainless cable at that end and then at other end we have more stainless cable that feeds through another screw in eye about 200 feet away from course and turns toward shore at about 45 degrees and we have another screw in anchor about 5 feet offshore and goes up to a trailer winch mounted on what would look like the front of a trailer and that is set in concrete in the ground. We just winch up when water drops. We release tension when we sink for winter. Super easy to keep the course tight.

Thanks for the input guys. Seems like $1500 would be a fair price.

I think the big thing is learning to lean away from the boat through both wakes. We use to have newbies go from just outside the wake and try to pass the boat up by keeping handle at waist, getting their hips and chest up. It is amazing how long you can hold this position just matching the boat speed out on the wing. That is the first step getting equal on both sides. Then we would have them run mid buoys and then alternate mid to full. They seem to lose focus on the wakes when they are focused on getting to the next buoy. You can be really stacked great but if you aren't leaning against the handle, you will not get speed or width.

We have a Chubb policy on our 2007 SN, with $1MM Liability. Does anyone have or know of insurance that goes above $1MM Liability? We would like to look at that if there is. Thanks

It would be unsupervised, waivers signed, etc. Basically a skier who has skied with us in the past wants to bring his boat and kids in and ski for a while throughout the summer. Some slalom course use, knee boarding, and tubing. My guess 3-4 hours per time. I am not sure who would pull him or if he would ski at all.

What would be a reasonable charge to let someone bring their boat and family in to use a ski lake for a few hours?

Blue Dye is the same as used in food coloring and prevents sunlight from nurishing the weeds. Sequent granules are reasonable and easy to apply. Much safer and prettier than chemicals. We throw a few Sterile Amurs and Tilapia in for good measure. If you have phragmites, invasive Russian cattails, they will choke the common cattail out and create a 10 foot high razor sharp barrier all around the lake. So far, the high % Vinegar/salt/soap mix is keeping them at bay and we haven't had to hit them with the hard chemicals.

Thanks @Ed_Johnson I think I have a couple of the SS wings laying around somewhere so will start smaller first. Any month now our weather might break!

Getting ready to hit the water with the new 71" Senate Lithium. This Whisper Fin seems like it may have some merit to help the big rigs turn better, which is always a problem when under duress in the course. I have tried the Slotfin in the past, but it didn't feel right all the way at the back of the ski, and when moved forward, it seemed to roll off edge behind the boat. Are people running a standard wing or something like a Schnitz wing on the WFin? Multiple wings just seems like it would create a lot more drag, which I create myself. AB

I just know that you shouldn’t look down at the wake or at the buoy. Bad things usually happen if you do. Eyes level or not. Whether you look into the boat initially, like I do a lot, or all the way across the wake to find the next buoy, the result is your eyes want to go level (not at head tilt commensurate with body lean) and eyes level to water is what I think is what you want and works best. Truth be told if I look at the buoy I tend to ski to the buoy so I always have to tell myself to look in front of the buoy.

@Bruce_Butterfield totally agree with the 196 commment. I really like our 2007 dual puck Exclalibur. I also drive a brand new MasterCraft 6.0 and Nautique 6.0, and while the new technology is bedazzling, I don't see a reason to throw a ton of money in for an upgrade. Especially with my tournament days likely being over. I just hope we can keep picking up satellites with our old dual puck system. The guys that own the other boats ski mid to deep 38 on the new stuff and ski the same behind our old gal.. The one guy has a 16-year old girl who doesn't have any trouble with the wakes and skis 1-3 @38 all day long behind any of them. (It is a shame she may not get a chance to ski in Jr Masters this year).

@Bruce_Butterfield did you try a bike rack?