jhughes

The buying cycle on these, particularly the larger sizes, is like 10 years. As in people buy them and hold on to them forever. Not for sale often and if so they are at a premium used. As such some point you may have to just bite the bullet and get a new one and amortize it over 10 years!

Mind blown by the cap nut replacement idea AND the longer screw swap-out idea. Absolute gold.

That's a great design actually, very nice!

Optimas are overkill and in my experience have not brought anything "extra" to the table. Walmart Everstart does great and IIRC are manufactured by JCI.

@rockdog maybe Melbourne wants to keep it that way? I recall a pro competitor saying she went there last year sick and still competed. No judgement, just what was said.

What's pictured seems normal to me, once a ski comes out of the mold the excess is trimmed off and that's just what skis look like. From my experience Radar has high build quality in general.

@storm34 couldn't agree more and FW is just fun to be around and a great person to just chat with about the sport in general. I believe we will be there that week as well for spring break.

@swbca the 86 Rainbow Brite was a sweet boat for sure.

I liked the 2007 TT then most. Had the different color on each side, paid homage to the Stars and Stripes while still holding its own modern look. Great looking boats and those usually had PP and ZO, crossover year for MC.

You’ll be happy to know 1990 was the year one boat and it’s as fantastic as the rest. They are all “year 30ish” boats by now.

In that target range go for 2015-16, better throttle lever, engine placement, handling. From personal experience driving the heck out of these boats every year, not just going off the rumor mill here.

My wife and I first went to Bennett's in 2003, I think we were probably 24 at the time. We were sharing our own HO Mach 1 with an adjustable front binding and RTP between my wife and I, we actually brought that with us to share as our "good ski". We had barely ever skied behind a "real" inboard boat. Had never run the course, and I'll never forget I blew my first deep water start in front of a dock full of college kids! Sully was coaching there at the time. I think UCLA and Illinois ski teams were there that year. By the way, how did we hear about ski school? Waterski magazine article about Sully hosting Todd R. down there and hitting the big easy and everything. Made us want to go, would never have known it existed otherwise. Since then we have been totally immersed in the sport and it's a major part of our family lifestyle. We ended up going back multiple times with no kids, pregnant, one kid, two kids, etc. Most of the time we're the only "grown ups" there and we fall right in line with the college teams and whoever else is there and it's an absolute BLAST every time. We meet people from around the world and come home with stories we tell for the rest of our lives. I believe I was even voted MVP partier by UWM and Marquette in '16, no joke. Won a bottle of Rumpleminz for that honor.

Seems like you may be waiting around for the right “tip” that finally resonates and boom, you’re in perfect skiing position. Doesn’t work like that in most sports including slalom unfortunately. Luckily in this case, as opposed to throwing a slider or knuckleball properly we are simply talking about executing “standing up”. The result is easy to conceptualize and there are no tricks to it, really. At the end of the day, executing it is work, mental and physical and it's over a determined period of time. It’s putting a process in place with a feedback loop over the entire next summer. Being determined that this is the truth and the way and asking yourself if you did it every set. It’s easy to do behind the boat just standing there, so do it in the move out, then the glide, then the turn in, then the turn, then ball to wake, etc. bit by bit. As Scoke said the overarching concept is lean+resist vs. squat+pull. Watch this:

I liked the interview and I love EM's style and alignment on the water, she also does a great job on Insta. FWIW I'm half GenX and half Millenial.

Wasn't the T-factor a Terry design (hence T)?

@ski6jones what level of skiing are we talking about here? My favorite skis have almost always been great out of the box. Further, almost every ski I’ve tried is great at 15 and 22 off. Only at 28 do differences just slightly start to peek out, FWIW.

I'm lucky enough to be able to A/B test my boat (5.3L200) vs. the old 6L and the new 6.2LDI regularly, same lake, same driving pattern, same water, etc. as we usually get the club (Malibu) boat with the bigger engine every year (6.0 the last couple years, now the 6.2DI last year). I've never been disappointed with my 5.3 in any of those comparisons and we have a SHORT setup, <1800ft. I'm skiing into 35 off at 34mph FWIW. I believe when the 5.3 came out, which also corresponded with Single-Puck ZO in 2016, folks were not happy with the ZO programming for the new GenV DI small blocks. AFAIK that's long been corrected but could have left a bad taste out there to this day. PCM/Nautique were way ahead here by introducing these marinized DI motors in the 2016 model year. At the end of the day the 5.3DI (Gen V GM L83) and the 6.2DI (Gen V GM L86) are the same generation GM small block with the same design features, designed at the same time, just different displacement. It doesn't make any sense that they would have any substantial difference in feel at least at my level. The 5.3 is a lot of power, The 6.2 is bonkers power. The old 6.0 feels like less power than both of the new GenV offerings. I have no recent experience with the old 5.7. Both of those old blocks should weigh more than the GenV aluminum block and heads which is another thing to think about as well.

I can't believe these pics are from 2015 already but time flies. Just some random shots from a practice set Woody was skiing with Johnny Sharman back then. Reeling in some slack here.

This hurts, we had a lot of fun with Woody at Bennett’s. Great coach there and always fun to be around. He always joked about being accident prone. What happened?

RTP choice and fit makes a big difference and is often neglected. I recently replaced mine with the D3 version and almost immediately skied better and more consistently, just because it was new (not saying the D3 version is somehow magic or anything like that). FWIW I have mine tight enough that it may take a few good kicks to get it in all the way and my big toe is usually in contact with the back of the front boot. Front to back mounting on the plate the rubber strap is in the stock position.

Oh good topic. I have a TRX but I honestly hate doing it. I think it's effective but I don't like doing the workouts for whatever reason. Great solution though with many high points. I did take August off of booze completely and lost 14 pounds, finally ran a PB pass (-32), and completely owned the next pass down (-28) and lowered my lipid panel quite a bit, YMMV. For cardio you cannot beat a C2 Rower. They are not super cheap but you can always sell them for nearly what you paid new. Very in-demand item and I love it. Takes real technique to do right which makes it even more fun. For cheap cardio you cannot beat the "devil's tricycle" AKA the old Schwinn Airdyne. Now rebranded and relaunched by various Crossfit-oriented brands as a trendy "Assault bike" the old-school yard-sale version will destroy you just as readily and can be found for cheap at grandma's garage sale. I love doing interval stuff on it vs. just grinding away on it of course. This machine will break you AND has a very small footprint which is nice. For weights, a 35lb and 53lb kettlebell is plenty, something like Pavel's "Simple and Sinister" method of swings and TGUs is all you need there. PU bar of course, lots of good options from Rogue on those. Agreed on all the body weight exercise comments as well. Push ups, pull ups, burpees. Even those work-to-100-pull-ups or 100 burpee or whatever programs are solid.

Maybe reach out to an MC dealer as no doubt they have replaced a bunch of those and probably have an alphabet soup of those laying around somewhere.

Seems like an edge case. There is a lot to worry about and a lot that could potentially happen on a boat or doing almost anything. People get killed by vending machines every year. It's good to be aware of this stuff but it's not like in 30 years anything has changed with that particular boat to all of a sudden make it some "killer boat" or some new hazard that just appeared out of nowhere. There's a spinning propeller underneath, there's fumes in the engine compartment that can blow up, there is exhaust that comes out the back, etc. etc.

How hard would it have been to re-shoot this, LOL? Probably less time than editing the video.

As someone who ran 32 this summer @Than_Bogan and @scoke are right. A lot of advice in this forum needs to be aligned with rope length and speed. Eg some nuance of wake-to-ball approach may be for someone trying to crack 38. For me my lack of fundamentals hit a wall at 32. At that stage it’s stance, lean vs pull, gate fundamentals. You can’t possibly be tall enough, you can’t possibly be leaning vs pulling too much, you can’t possibly be too high on the boat. Even executing that stuff maybe at 25% the pass can be run.