Laz

@cobber Great to hear you had an awesome time. This will be my fourth trip (3rd with the kids). It will be the first time with the second lake. As always, very excited.

I think anything that floats would only be a partial solution. Would this work: Create a wall of tires, say about 5 feet deep and a few feet wide with about about one foot above the surface of the water. Then, have this wall anchored to the bottom of the lake and with flotation to keep the tension on the anchor lines. This would act like a non-floating barrier and the tires would work to diffuse the waves allowing for the peak and trough to cancel out. I tried find out what the risk is of having hundreds or thousands of tires in a lake but could not find any clear answer. It seems that particulate matter from tire wear is the bigger issue and likely having tires in the water is reasonable but I would have to find an expert. https://goo.gl/FGJo0m The scrap tires might be free and the installation would be very labour intensive.

Reviving and old thread.... I ski at a lake that has two parallel courses. Only one can be used at a time and the decision is based on the wind direction. We would like to separate the lake with some sort of barrier so the courses can be run at the same time. Any suggestions? I think the tire barrier at the Orlando Watersports Complex seems to work well. Does anyone have enough experience to let us know if it would be robust enough to run two boats at the same time?

When asked by my casual skiing friends, why I'm so focused on course skiing, I tell them that free skiing is the golf equivalent going to the driving range. Enjoy your course.

Thanks for all the great advice I received from the collective BOS wisdom. I ended up spending a few hours driving and skiing behind a 2015 Prostar: This is the best looking boat, IMHO. I liked the layout best of any boat I've been in. It definitely torqued to one side going through the course, but tracked pretty well. It was a bit loud. The wakes are good, but not quite as good as I had remembered. Then the initial deal on a 2015 Nautique magically improved dramatically. It's a 6L 200 OB. Really tough to beat. I think it's the best driving boat of the bunch, which is critical for my wife and (soon) son to drive. She will be ours in the spring. I sold our 2007 Moomba for a fair price. One last thing about the Moomba: it's too bad they are not making a direct drive anymore. This boat is 90% as good as any of the big three but about half the price. It was the boat that allowed us to become a 3 generation ski family. Otherwise, we would have gotten another stern drive and eventually switched to sailing (or lawn bowling). It wasn't until my son and I starting making some 35' off progress, that we began to appreciate the newer boats. Again, thanks BOS.

@wish This is all true. I was right there. Great to meet Cale and watch him ski. Fortunately, the injuries should heal quickly. Jason's skiing was spectacular. He ran 39 in all three rounds and got deeper into 41 each time. He has been a great coach to the Ontario team (including my son) who all had impressive results at the tournament and all season. What a great sport. Thanks Jason!

From @Horton: My comments are about learning to run the course. I've watched my wife struggle and it is strength and willingness to commit to the wake this kept her from running 6 balls and kept her from really catching the bug. I think that first 6 buoys is critical in building somebody's interest and I think men being more aggressive and stronger get through that easier. Once you get over that hump and start running passes I have no idea why there's more men than women in the sport. ----- I'm in the same...ah..boat. I don't think it's as much of a strength issue as it is a willingness to commit. My wife will ski within 6 inches off all 6 buoys but just not go around them. No matter what the coach says, she always seems to back off at the wake. She definitely enjoys the sport (when conditions are just right), but I'm sure that if she finally ran the course, her enthusiasm wound increase. She is becoming a better driver, so that's good.

I have been wondering about an electric boat for a long time. I have almost 100 000 gas free km on my electric car. Regardless of whether you accept the fact of man made climate change or not (see Panda above), once you have spent time in an electric car, you can never go back. The company that made the electric Nautique is LTS Marine, based in Quebec. (http://goo.gl/nwnXRJ). I emailed them last year wondering how much energy a slalom set would use. I thought that one could grab a small suitcase sized battery from the charger, plug it into the boat and ski a set. This is what they told me: *** Our experience shows a slalom set requires a little less than 10 kWh and current technology gives between 12 and 20 kg / kWh depending of the cell chemistry. The challenge is the high power that the battery needs to deliver for slalom skiing. The more powerful the chemistry, the heavier which would amount to around 200 kg, roughly 400 lbs for a 10 kWh battery, maybe a little less. The best way to accommodate a school / club environment is a fast charger on the dock. A fast charger can refill the boat battery in about 20 minutes and alternating between wakeboard and ski gives enough time to refill. *** BTW, a Tesla battery weight is about 6kg/kWh.

There is nothing cheap about either place. On the other hand, for a mid winter waterski vacation for someone who lives "north of the wall", there is nothing better. This year we are taking the whole family to Water Ski Costa Rica. It's part of my plan to spend my last dollar on my last day.

I found 32 quite tough but have now begun to run it fairly regularly. What helped me is understanding that the course is actually quite narrow compared to its length. Once I realized that I would get the needed width even with a slightly earlier edge change, I stopped getting slack at one and two.

Wow. Thanks for the great responses. I appreciated hearing from so many with a lot more experience than me. More to think about it, and I'm getting there. I will hopefully check out a couple of these boats this weekend. Just put my boat up on ski-it-again, if there are any interested Canadians. It's a great boat that got us into the sport.

@Gloersen I couldn't agree more. At this point she is just tolerating my planned purchase. @jetpilotg4 What do you hate about driving it? @fox197 Yes, it has the removable bow cover @Orlando76 We have a 2007 Moomba Outback. There is actually nothing wrong with the boat. However, as my son and I start to ski shorter line lengths and get a bit more competitive (me), a lot more competitive (son, he's at the nationals today), the differences become more obvious. Besides, no zero-off and the much harsher wake, drive ability is key as I will not have experienced drivers most of the time. @MISkier My PB is actually behind a TXi.

@Wish Yes, hopefully no loyalty wars, but the responses so far are good. @Porkfight, @6balls Money is a concern, and I don't think I'll buy new. I'm looking at a 2015 Prostar with 110 hours. I think this tops the list. The second choice is a 2014 200 with 390 hours, well maintained but closed bow. @dtm8119 I'm not sure an open bow is that important to me but my wife disagrees.

Hi Ballers, apologies for the long post. After 9 years of great service, I think my family has outgrown out our current boat. It's not an entirely rational decision, but I have it my head to get a new boat. We have three generations of skiers. Some ski long line at 26-28 mph, others are working on 35 off 34 mph. An important factor is tracking if I hope to get my wife to drive for me. We will trailer the boat and ski on public water with a drop in course. Please help me decide: 2015 Nautique 200: a bit more expensive, but very used to it from our local club and tournaments. 1) is it worth the extra money? 2) If I get a closed bow, will it not work as well as a family boat? 3) is this the gold standard? 2015 Mastercraft Prostar: (current first choice) 1) Only skied behind it twice. Seemed great at 22' off. Should be good at long line and slower speeds. 2) Is it very loud? Didn't notice. 3) Are the trick wakes inadequate? My son is starting to trick. 4) Is the wake too wide? Is the boat too strong? (things I've heard but can't confirm). 5) How well does it track? 2016 or 2017 Malibu TXi 1) Any reason not to get this one? Seems good all around. Centurion Carbon Pro 1) Skied behind it once. Seems nice. Only closed bow. How well does it track? 2) Trick wakes? Anything else I should consider? Much appreciated.

It's so tough to watch the webcast live. I tried to hide from Twitter and all the rest of the internet while I wait for the archive to come out (maybe a week?). And I would have made too, if not for those pesky teenagers (my kids). Mystery gone. But still looking forward to watching the archive, hopefully will be good quality since the rebroadcast will not dependent on lakeside bandwidth.

Just ordered. @skijay would you consider selling a complete fin tuning tool kit? Thought about when visiting your site.

I booked the sets through this site

Going to Miami at the end of Feb and early March to ski with Arturo. To me he seems a little bit like the Mr. Miyagi of slalom. He would not let me go past my opening pass (22') until I ran it perfectly. Usually I rush through 22' off, hating it and start focusing on 28 and 32. Now I'm with Arturo. Running a near perfect 22' was a major skiing epiphany allowing me to set my new PB deep into 35. He is now one of my favourite instructors. As for my wife, she loves to ski just on the inside of the buoys which drives me crazy. Hopefully Arturo can fix this. Lastly, this will be an expensive trip. Paying for it with Canadian pesos. Argh.

My son and I just switched to Reflex bindings because I *think* they are safer. Unfortunately, all of these accounts are anecdotal so drawing conclusions is impossible. It would be incredibly valuable if we could get some real objective data on water ski injuries. Although I'm no expert, I have an idea how we could proceed. One possibility would be to create a prospective database. First, we would have to get a fairly large number of skiers to volunteer to track injuries, Then our volunteer subjects would report all injuries in a prospective manner, giving all the details such as speed, rope length, bindings, course vs free skiing, etc. Once we have enough data (incidents), we get someone smart to crunch the numbers and see if there are correlations. To power this study, we would need to know roughly what the injury rate is to determine how many skiers would be needed to follow and for how long. BOS could be a great place to coordinate this. I might even be able to find a keen slave, I mean med student to run the project. @Horton et al, any interest/suggestions? Any skiers out there with a little clin-epi knowledge? Of course if we ran this project with jumpers, 5 skiers and a long weekend would provide plenty of data -;

I should have skied on our day in Joburg. Thanks for the reply. However, we are now back in frozen Toronto. In the end, Mofam did not seem to enthusiastic and I didn't want drive an hour without knowing what to expect. That site looks great.

That's the number I've been trying. I'll try that email. Thanks.

Hello, I tried calling and emailing the Mofam River Lodge and have not heard back. Does anyone know if they are still in business?

I used to feel the same as you. I ski at 34mph, start at 22' off and recently made it to 5@35' off. I used to ski 22' off quite poorly and just use it as a warm up to 28' and 32' off which are much more fun. That was until I spent 4 days skiing with Arturo Nelson. In his Yoga-like way (or maybe it's more of a Mr. Miyagi) had had me run multiple 22's until I started crossing the wake properly. Then we moved on to 28. While I was there I had my second water ski epiphany in my 8 year career and finally started running 32' off consistently and without the usual struggle, then set a new PB of 5@35' off. Thank you, Arturo I now think that running a solid 22' off will help me run a better 35' off.

@gt2003 I have a 2007 Moomba Outback now with 500 hours and I have nothing bad to say about it. It's too bad they don't make a DD anymore. We bought this boat because 8 years ago, we really weren't sure if skiing was going to be a passing phase or a serious commitment. The Outback allowed us get into the sport for less than half what a new Nautique or similar would have cost. Now, (as @Ed_Obermeier knows), skiing is serious business in my family. We now use our Outback much less because most of our skiing is done at our local club. However, we still trailer the boat to a cottage at least twice per summer set up our www.ez-slalom.com (thanks Ed) course. I can feel a bit of a difference at 22' off and it takes a fraction of a second to get up to speed, but that's it. My thoughts: - Any DD ski boat is an order of magnitude improvement over an I/O. - I would say that skiing in the course with an Outback is 90% as good as any other boat out there with respect to wake, tracking, starting, etc. The price in your original post is not that far from a brand new boat. Maybe there is room for negotiations.

Awesome. Thanks!