bishop8950

@MarkM me too, laces loose on rear animal.

Not my boat or @cruznski either. Belongs to our ski buddy so we are lucky to have many rides behind it in our future. It drove perfectly right off the trailer and skis great. The gel is not metal flake but looks good. It’s a nice red.

@kurt it’s gray on the bottom

At our lake we have 4 sanctions up from 2 for the last 5yrs at least.

@Horton should fly to FL to spend time with @mike_mapple and get some podcast material on even a few bits of the knowledge in the GOATs notebooks. Even a glimpse would be really interesting.

I can ski or drive a boat that isn’t level, but if all I have to do is move a sand/lead bag, fill a ballast tank or ask someone to observe (always a safer plan anyway) why wouldn’t I? I ski many lakes and boats. Not everyone has ballast. So, I have a 40lb bag that lives in my car, not kidding.

I skied NorCal with Badal today. Total team 108. He ran 39, I didn’t.

When I am stacked behind the boat, part of my mass (lower body and ski) is between me and the boat and the rest (mid and upper body) is behind the handle and farthest from the boat. When I am efficiently stacked I feel my lower body and ski swing from closest to the boat to farthest. The better my stack, the more easily and farther my ski swings out. When I am not stacked my lower body swings less and instead my upper body comes inside the ideal arc and over my ski. I feel less upswing, end up on a worse line and fall behind the boat at the buoy. It actually easy to feel on the water. Not just interesting theory.

The site looks amazing. I am from MI and next time I am back I may have to come check it out. $50-100/set seems pricy for most skier budgets. However, I am a member at a private lake in CA and by the time you roll in all property costs, all boat costs, a driver and any margin, you approach your price range faster than many think. Especially if lake usage is low and you can’t distribute fixed property costs over high usage. Many lakes in the country are cheaper to maintain/operate than ours. As Bruce said we can run lower cost boats. As I said if you get busy, fixed costs are less per ride. In the end, it will be interesting to see what happens, and the lake will be beautiful regardless. Good luck!

Thanks @MarcusBrown and @FWinter, great stuff. In my skiing over the last several years, improving how I move out past centerline has been the top priority. The light bulb went off that this is how I can run more buoys. As you discussed, there are many prerequisites that need to be in place to enable you to swing out and up. I would like to hear more about common themes or mindsets you describe to skiers to help them wrap their heads around this. Here are my top 3 examples that have helped me and all of which mentioned in your discussion: First, don’t try to get load as soon as you can off the buoy, you need to get fully under the line and allow the load to build on your way to the wake. After apex I tell myself “Wait for it...” and I try to ski as far as I can towards the first wake without the boat. Second, (credit @AdamCord and @adamhcaldwell) “stand up” through the transition”. Third (credit @matthewbrown) “make sure hips are over your feet”, not behind, as you swing through the transition. In this clip you also discuss “back arm pressure” which is huge. Any other keys to the right swing? What thought, goal or metric can I put in my head as I ski? I just want to go deeper down this rabbit hole. You guys have such a deep understand and also have analyzed so many skiers. Would love to hear more on this and this video format of the discussion is really effective.

My guess is you will have more glare in the afternoon, but you generally plan to use it in the morning only. We ski in some glare and as others said you get used to it. I find the glare is much worse with some wind. Instead of one bright spot there are thousands of sparkles. I find that in glass and full glare I can still find the buoy at some point in the turn. In some chop, it can be really hard. The worst of it is 20min for the driver and then 20min for the skier. As the skier, you go from not able to see the gates to not able to see one side of the turn balls as the glare shifts. I find it fun to adjust. As @Than_Bogan said, depends on where you look and I will change my vision to work around the glare.

Greg, I skied in that BD event and then watched Marc make his way through the bracket running 3@39 over and over again. Great memories. We will miss you Marc, RIP

I will miss him, hanging out at events, working to organize events, skiing together and always having a good time. RIP Marc, we will miss you.

@dave2ball the depreciation is totally different for a 2021 anything than a 2009 anything. Only fuel is equivalent.

Practice counts. Purple is a tough pass and you are clearly doing a lot of things right to knock it down. The first one is the hardest end most of the time it comes easier after that!

Not sure I have anything new to say. Overall, it’s just sad to see the sport I love seemingly slipping away. Or hopefully I have it wrong and we are just evolving. With boat prices going up and apparently less people willing to buy them it would be reasonable the boat companies choose to subsidize the tournament/promo side less. Let’s hope they continue to do what they can. We have been increasingly leaning on promo owners to subsidize which isn’t right. Do we have a choice other than having skiers pay to play? I am 100% fine with paying a higher entry fee to cover the hours I put on the boat. I like the idea of looser requirements for Class C and perhaps a smaller boat cost contribution to the tournament. I am also happy to pay more for a record using newer boats. Access to promos in the events I host has been legitimately impacted over the last few years. In those events, I used to get 6 boats over 3 tournaments. This year we got 1 boat (and he was a LOC memeber), and it had nothing to do with Covid. We used personal boats for the rest of the tournaments and compensated the boat owners a bit, but not enough. They agreed to sponsor the rest as it was “our club and friends”. It is not a sustainable model though. I expect to pay to play in NorCal 2021. Do the experiment and collect feedback.

NorCal Indian summer just ended. Skied today with 60/60 air/water. Comfortable in a full Camaro.

Missed this thread first time around and really looking forward to @drew report after trying it. I want to try it! I would be interested in both wider and longer. I realize with so many private lakes longer would be a challenge, but curious. If we had a tournament course at 12M (keep current length) and a training course at 10M it would be interesting for both new skiers and tournaments skiers. With today’s 11.5M course there there is little less room to do this effectively. 9.5M? Instead, we just run the split path to make a pseudo “mini course”.

What about a step in this direction through the ESPN streaming content. I personally haven’t looking into this but I though they have a channel with access to webcast type events and smaller sports. Would The current waterski webcasts fit in there?

Webcast quality was so good. From announcing to high res video to production it was excellent.

Water around 70 in NorCal, but Indian summer is about to fade to fall. Water temps will be in the mid 60s soon.

Fun to watch, thanks. Crazy to see 4 people in the boat for slalom. I saw tour stops there in 88/89. Also skied there a bunch in college with the MSU team. Great times.

My favorite part is how patient and controlled he is between the apex and the next load from the boat. Even if the turn isn’t perfect, he is so composed back under the line and waits until It’s time to swing to the other side. Additionally, his athleticism to make split second adjustments through the pass is incredible.

Cool to see some waterski VH fans, I am with you. RIP Eddie!

Make tournaments more fun, for the skiers or spectators? I think we mean skiers. If yes, which skiers? Pros, Ex Pros, Big Dawgs, National level skiers, or all skiers. If we say the crew that attends BOSCP I agree with Horton it works pretty well as it is. But, adding a gambling component is interesting. How about this, for the BOSCP H2H top seed, they get to pick their opponent from any skier that qualified 9-16. Kinda like playground rules for team selection but backwards. Could make for some fun match ups. Then the 2nd seed chooses from the 7 skiers left and so on. The only somewhat unfair part is the 9th seed has no advantage over 16 even though they earned it in qualifying. Maybe Not for BOSCP, But I like team events. Collegiate was so much fun. I think there is a place for the ability placed format John outlined above.