MCskiFreak

Show skiing was the only game in town when I moved to Sarasota, so if I wanted to keep skiing that was my only choice. Its probably one of the best choices I have ever made, both skiing and personally. On the skiing side I have been forced to learn to do new things and not be a one trick pony slalom skier, and on the personal side the people that I have met are amazing and have become like a surrogate family after moving from Michigan. The ability level of a number of the skiers on the team is right up there with some of the best young three eventers in the country imo. A large number of the college age skiers go and ski at Sea World or the Dells in the summer and a couple of pro wake boarders have been produced from the club, J.D Webb and Zane Schwenk. I do think that there is an opportunity for some cross over though, during peak season the Ski-A-Rees attract crowds of ~2,000 every sunday...if that could be combined with a major 3 event tournament I think exposure to the general public would be huge.

I ended up joining the sarasota ski a Rees show ski team as there isn't anything closer than 50ish miles. There are plenty of options north of Tampa and I believe there are a few more down in the ft Myers and Naples area

@ToddL the rule being referred to is not specific to a boat towing a skier or other water sports, what it states is that the a vessel with restricted maneuverability, the tow boat in this case, has the right of way. The rule can be found in the USCG inland waterways rules of the road, as well as in the 33CFR

@ToddL the rule being referred to is not specific to a boat towing a skier or other water sports, what it states is that the a vessel with restricted maneuverability, the tow boat in this case, has the right of way. The rule can be found in the USCG inland waterways rules of the road, as well as in the 33CFR

@gator1 Heres your answer... simplyhired.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341caa1053ef0168e87db8e7970c-pi

Right, as far as the ski companies are concerned most of their marketing people are the skiers themselves. I was looking at it more from the boat company perspective, and MC as well as Nautique both have pretty serious marketing teams.

Probably the major that is going to make it the easiest to be hired by one of these companies is an engineering major, but even then it is not a given. I'll use MasterCraft as an example...I interned for them while I was a naval architecture student and became good friends with some high level people upon graduation they had an opening and went for it, but even with my experience and contacts they were unwilling to take someone with fewer than five year experience. The five years thing seems to be a big deal for all white collar type positions at MC though. Nautique was more receptive based on my resume and real world skills, but I cannot comment on that being company wide. If you're completely against doing any type of technical degree I would say that marketing would be your next best bet since this market is so driven by selling the "lifestyle" of skiing. Above all regardless of major get an internship with one of the companies you are interested in and start building contacts from there. This is a small industry and having experience in it will give you a major leg up over your potential competition.

McCormicks is also near the area...not really a ton of coaching or ski sites on the south west coast of Florida though.

@eleeski Did you attempt any maneuvers at 34/36mph with the plate at a negative trim angle? The fact that you state it got loud and rattly at those speeds would indicate to me either you were able to ventilate the prop/rudder or that flat plate had a lot of cavitation occurring.

MSU qualified as well!

@ShaneH, I was aware that it was being kept out there, and I don't want to take away from what Marcus did and huge props to him for setting John straight in the interview. As you know MC has a very good Naval Architect as well as several industrial and mechanical engineers. I know that it can be very frustrating to have your hard work be praised, but the credit is given to someone else. I just didn't want to see that group of guys contrabutions marginalized.

@swc5150 how about a thanks to the engineers, designers, and plug builders who do the actual hard work of doing the calculations, the modeling, and the building? The skiers do give valuable input that the engineers need to make these boats happen but they are not responsible for developing the boat beyond skiing behind it and giving an opinion. It's then up to the PD&E guys to figure out what they need into an actual product. I've spent time with all the MC team skiers and think they are all fantastic people, but give credit where it's due. I found Marcus' comment in the press release to be somewhat off putting "Engineering a better wake is less about science and numbers and more about passion, vision, dedication and experience." So, I would like to thank the MC product development department for their hard work and long hours which have produced this great boat!

MC has implemented some new qc and mfg processes to help control weight variation but there will be some due to the fact that the boats are built using open molds and the resin is sprayed onto the laminates. They have resin counters to show the amount of resin sprayed but let's just say you never see a technicians use too little resin. This was a major issue when I was there and hopefully it has been dealt with.

Im in the middle of studying for my last set of finals so I cant delve into the problem in detail right now...that will have to wait until the end of next week. I did remember that I had this paper that investigates the dynamics of planing hull forms in turns and thought it may be of interest to some of the nerdier members among us. The paper topic is largely applicable to the roll stability problem of a waterski, and if nothing else is an interesting read.

Will be a full fledged engineer at the end of next week!

Thank you for the advice guys!! The place on Wendell road looks great...old gravel pit from the looks of it.

So I have to become a full fledged adult in May and graduate from college...I have taken a job in Sarasota and will be looking for a place to ski. Does anyone have any suggestions for clubs in the area or locals. I know that there is a show ski team in the area, but I am looking for someplace that has a course. Also if you have any suggestions for places to live that would be great as well!

If it is an older Elan that was built when Ron Tanis was still involved with the company it will be a quality boat. He was the only builder that used bi-axial and tri-axial stiched cloth rather than woven rovings, so the boats were pretty advanced in that respect. They also had alot of unique features for their time. As others have said they have some of the best ski wakes of any boat ever built, as far as the chine locking issue the old boats had very small rudders and upgrading to a modern rudder would help keep that issue from occuring. If the boat was built after lake 2002 the boat was built when Favret owned the buisness and quality took a huge hit in all areas of the manufaturing process. If you're interested there is a dedicated forum for those boats and Ron Tanis the former owner/designer of the boats posts there on a regular basis.

@swc5150 Look at the Carbon Pro's transom, that would be the limiting factor for the CG capacity rating I would imagine.

Aluminum can be a very good boat building material, if you want to see it done right though check out metalsharkboats.com. Having a successful hull that will take abuse when constructed of aluminum is highly dependent on how the structure of the boat is designed. I don't know what Pavati's is like but I have been pretty skeptic of this design since it came to light 3+ years ago, and to date the boat in the video is the only one that they have built.

The Underwater exhaust is already available, MC uses it on its 300 day yacht to reduce noise emission. Dacon Your second picture is a pretty close illustration to what a stepped hull does to the flow aft of the steps. Like Shane said though it does have side effects that a good design must eliminate. The reason that there are problems with ventilated hulls is they reduce the effective lateral area of the boat to be able to support a turn without slipping or spinning out. One of the best design to date has been a Micheal Peters designed hull that incorporates a central tunnel to give more lateral area to the hull. The two attached pictures show the ventilation problem and the Peters hull.

For the next 6 months I'm in New Orleans finishing school after that its back to Michigan for a real job. So if you're ever in New Orleans or mid-Michigan drop me a line.

@BrianD where do you ski in south LA?

The boat that will become the new Prostar has been in development since the end of 2010, MC wants a boat that will once again put CC on notice. @swc5150 MC sells alot more boats than CC, and CC's own policy of once it leaves the factory it's sold also screws with the number of boats built vs. number sold in a given year.

@footloose42 I worked for a year at MC as an intern and also have contacts at CC if you are interested feel free to e-mail me your info.