schroed

@jdarwin - I agree with what you've found. I found the Quest to be a bit sensitive to binding placement as well. I struggled a bit with my bindings at 29.5" on my 66 as recommended by D3. I moved my bindings back to 29.25" and the ski is working really well. I'm actually running my fin pretty close to my Fusion settings with this binding placement and I'm really happy with it.

Looks smooth Horton. What's your binding position and fin settings again? I've been playing around a bunch with mine. I'm not sure I have the best setup for me on my Quest yet. A few different settings feel good.

Sweet site. You should have regionals there again!

Changing his edge early but keeping his shoulders going in the same direction. It's either that or holding in his beer gut so you can't see it.

Just made my donation....

Did you guys forget about Nate Smith? I put an "entry" down for Nate. He won just about everything last year.

The patent is on putting rocker on the bottom of the fin block, not rocker in the ski. As you tighten the fin block onto the ski it forces the rocker into the ski rather than forcing the ski flat with a traditional flat bottom fin block. I rode a Quest with a Rockerblock for the second time yesterday and ran 38 with a drysuit and cold water. That's pretty good for me this time of year. I think people are really going to like this ski with the new Rockerblock.

I just rode the Quest for the first time yesterday. I think you'll like it.

Terry Winter is the best coach I've ever had. To the definition at the start of this thread, he is definitely a "life long student" who is willing to try different techniques and equipment to understand what works best. I've taken a bunch of lessons from him and he constantly is telling me ways to accomplish the same goal in different ways until I get it right. Further, he doesn't "over coach". In other words, he is very good at using a few words to get a point across such that I understand it and I am able to execute on the advice in the next few passes. He is also very active in our sport and wants people to succeed. I've seen him take an interest and get excited when people he's coached have skied well in local and national tournaments. He's also helped me after bad tournament rides by telling me what he thought went wrong. To me, that's what you need out of a coach. If you haven't taken a set with Terry in the boat coaching, I'd recommend it.

@horton : Thanks. That's a good article and the kind of info I was looking for.

It seems that most people believe that adding fin length will drive the tip of the ski in the water. Some ski manufacturers further claim that this is more noticeable on your offside turn. I'm wondering why this happens. Is it due to an increase in drag that creates a rotational moment which rotates the tip of the ski into the water or are there some other forces at work here? If it is simply drag, why is the tip pressure more prevalent on your off side turn as some ski manufacturers suggest?

My wife says she's going to ski this summer after about 10 years of not skiing and she's been in the gym almost everyday getting ready for it.

It's hard to beat Whistler/Blackomb for an overall ski/snowboard vacation experience. Flights to Vancouver are usually easy to get and don't have the weather problems that many other ski vacation spots have with flights. You can take a bus up to Whistler from Vancouver so you don't need to rent a car. You can usually find condos to rent that aren't that expensive. The skiing at Whistler is really good. I think it's the biggest resort in North America with plenty of different types of skiing (trees, glaciers, steeps). Their terrain parks are huge if your into that. Thier back country access is easy and the terrain you can get to with a short skin out of the resort is exceptional. The only problem could be the weather. Sometimes you get rain in the village and dense fog in the Alpine, but if the weathers bad, there's plenty of stuff do do in the village.

Very interesting thread. I'm a MM rated skier who consistantly runs 38 off but I don't seem to get too far at 39 in tournaments. I feel like this "senior division" or whatever you call it is targeted at skiers like me. Personally, I don't like it. I went to the Big Dawg in Abbotsford last year for fun and the hope of qualifying for the finals. After I skied bad in the first round, I thought I was out of it and called my wife to tell her I wasn't going to go to Florida for nats or the finals. However, most of the other skiers didn't do too well in the rough conditions either. I ended up skiing pretty well in the second round and made the finals. I then had to then call my wife back and tell her I was going to spend the money to go to Florida. I went to Florida and had a good time. My point is this, if I didn't qualify for the Big Dawg finals last year, but there was some other division targeted at 2 or 3 at 39 skiers like me to ski in that I did qualify for, I wouldn't have gone to Florida. I think my menatality is a bit like Hortons on the age divisions at nationals. I don't want to be "best of the rest". I want to work hard and see how I stack up against the best skiers. Further, I wouldn't want to ski in a different division or event than some of my friends like Kevin Bishop, Matt Brown, and Greg Badal. Even though I'd probably lose, I'd rather ski against them. Perhaps a better solution would be to just expand the head to head finals to 32 skiers and hold it over 2 days. The best skiers would probably get an easy ride through the first bracket and skiers like me might get a chance to go head to head against Mapple, Lapoint, or some other ex pro. That would be cool!

What do the holes in your fin do anyways? What would happen if you didn't have any holes? What would happen if you drill more holes or move them around? I've been riding a D3s for a long time and it seems like they've been using the same fin with the same holes for a long time. Why haven't the holes changed?

I'm curious to find out what wing angle everyone uses and how often they change it.

Skied yesterday in Sacramento, CA. It was almost hot here in the sun. Very surprising for November, but I'm not complaining. The only problem was sun and shadows developing way too early in the day.

That's my old ski site too (as Rod knows). In a way it's sad, but in some ways it can be a good thing. I know the new owners have paved the road and parking area, the water looks clean and blue (rather than the mud brown it's been for years), and they appear to be generally improving the site. I think @Killer has a point. Perhaps the cable wakeboard lake will bring some attention to waterskiing. Waterskiing coexisting with Wakeboarding is a good way to renew interest in Waterskiing.

What were the team scores? Looks like ASU did well. I'm wondering how Chico did.

Very interesting thread. I've been struggling with how to adjust my fin and even what ski to ride as the water changes temps around Sacramento. I've noticed that if I ride a 65" ski, I ski really well in the Spring when the waters cold and I don't ski so well in July and August when the water really warms up. If I ride a 66" ski, the opposite is true. This seems to be a consitent pattern at my same practice site on the same models of skis for water temps that vary from about 70 degrees F to around 90 degrees F. I'm 155 lbs and I'm right on the edge between ski sizes. It seems like I need a longer ski when the water gets warm. Also, @skijay mentioned that more wing angle "drags more of the ski's tip into the water". I don't think this is true. I think the wing acts like an elevator on an airplane and hence, the more wing angle you have, the more the water wants to push the wing level relative to the water surface, and thus you get more tip rise. You do get more drag, but that can be offset with more tip out of the water. This fall I started to struggle again on my 66" ski as the water cooled. I ended up setting up my ski with .5 degree more wing angle, a bit more length on the fin, and slightly shallower. I ran it longer to keep the tip down. I ran it showller so that I could keep the fiin area close to the same as I increased length as well as get the ski to "slide" a bit more on my onside. I'm not sure I'm doing what I should for water temp changes, it's just what I've found to work for me through trial and error.

@ToddF - One just sold on the North side of the lake. The one one the west side is still for sale.

@jcamp, that's skylake in Chico. The house at the west side of the lake is for sale if you want to move there. Here's the one I've been wondering about: 38.925705 , -121.424299 . Who's lake is that?

I had to pay @dirt to not ski in MM and hence he won't have the oppurtunity to beat me. He took me down both rounds on Sunday at Shortline by running 2.5 @39 and 4 @ 39 after telling me he hadn't run 38 all week. I'm not sure I trust @dirt's self assesments of how he's been skiing...

@stevezie I have the same pain you describe near my right shoulder blade. It usually comes on if I don't strech properly before skiing. I don't think it's a pinched nerver but rather some strained muscles. I also get some tendonitis in my right arm and I think if that tightens up too much I start feeling the pain in my shoulder blade. I'm now icing my arm, elbow, and shoulder blade every night. Massage and rest also makes it go away.

I saw @dirt run 1.5 at 41 off the dock in practice last night with legit driving. M3 division at nationals is going to be tough!