andjules

I went to college in Montreal and have been missing it ever since. One of the few places in North America you can go that is fun, cosmopolitan, and yet isn't trying to be like NYC. I think we have a larger East Indian population here in Toronto, but for some reason, it's always seemed like all the great Indian chefs stayed in Montreal, so not surprised you had a great meal. I trust that at some point, someone in your party sampled Poutine. The ultimate carb-loading, fattening junk food, best eaten either i) on a cold day at a ski hill, ii) crawling out of a pub at 3am, or iii) as a last resort, trying to defeat your hangover the next day.

I'm with @jfw432 although the way I think about it is this: no matter your height, if you've skied on a ski a little too short for your weight, you know the story: somewhere in the preturn, you get a little forward, the tip digs a little too much and it's all you can do to keep yourself from going out-the-front. If you're 6'6", your center of gravity is that much higher, so it's that much harder to not go OTF. Thus the traditional taller rider = longer ski rule-of-thumb, which can apply more - or less - based on your core strength (or lack there of) and your consistency/ability to keep your body still & calm vs being a 'scrambler'. So I think weight is more important, but height is still a factor.

@6balls is absolutely right for the overall picture. As for slack, ball 1 @ 28 off, my 2¢: Pull right out wide, but make your turn in a little slower/earlier, and coming off the second wake concentrate on elbows-to-vest, trying to keep your momentum outbound/across-the-course. Looks like you're taking all your speed downcourse after the wakes, with your arms out towards the boat. Lots of great reading about this all over these forums. AND Good skiing @davehr40 - great to get back to it, isn't it? Keep it up!

p.s. congratulations on awesome skiing for someone whose season must be awfully short. Getting into -38 when your home site is in Alaska is pretty damn cool.

@JC McCavit you're way ahead of me, so it's not really my place to chime in. And I think @Roger and @Rich are talking about the really important stuff that will help your progress. Nonetheless, I'm intrigued by how far back the water is breaking on your foot coming into the turn - I don't think everyone who comes up early and stuggles with outbound momentum ends up that far back. I also notice you've got your bindings back and you're skiing a 66" @ 175lbs which might be on the edge of short @ 34mph (I notice you've also got a 67" strada in your signature). All of that makes me wonder if somewhere in your past you've had bad experiences with the opposite - the front of the ski digging in the preturn - and you're now compensating? Or have you always ridden like that? When I think of someone on a short ski, bindings back, riding back, it makes me think that person likes to push the end of the turn ('hook'), but to be fair, you seem fairly patient in your turn, letting it carve. Makes me wonder if you had other tendencies earlier in your ski career that made you comfortable with that setup. Partly wondering because I'm 175 on a good day, and I think I'm long overdue to move from an old narrow 66" to a more modern 67". If I try to drop the speed to 32mph to work on something, it really doesn't support me in the turn (rides pretty deep). Which makes me wish I could get my weight further back (like you), even though I know that's not the ideal.

@JTW, it's fall now. If you think you'll get some good practice time this fall with a coach/helpful partner in the boat, then I'd make the transition now. I'd start by freeskiing, getting used to the rhythm of it, shorter, harder leans, wider pull-outs. DISCLAIMER: I'm Canadian, so as @richarddoane points out, I'm biased. LL just doesn't have the 'rhythm' of slalom skiing in my mind.

It would be great if @Horton could put the original article somewhere easy-to-find on the site (it should also be on fifteenoff.com!). I think the reason this thread is remaining on the front page is because the original resource ('treatise') is so useful (thanks @Than_Bogan).

and another site maybe 2 miles straight north of the first one. You can see the slalom course & a boat. Geez! And another about another 2 miles north, with a ramp... is that the club?

@popof, it seems to me the original premise is flawed. Your friend's style is old school, closed shoulders, dig deep and pull like hell. Fine (mine's not far off when I'm scrambling). So why is a tunnel going to make such a huge difference and 'eject him into outer space'? I can see why he might not like (on first attempt) a full carbon ski, if he overturns and then hopes to hang on to that angle (on the other hand, if he's getting older, he might prefer it after backing off a little). But tunnel vs. edge-to-edge concave... what's going to happen? His new ski will be different, but new skis always are. I don't recall wanting to give up skiing when I switched between tunnel and full concave, as I did a few times during the 80s. What might make a bigger difference is sticking to a narrow-tailed or tight-turning/'hook-able' ski if he likes being a hook-and-dig kind of skier.

@sunvalleylaw - don't worry about 50. Worry about fit. At 42, I'm the youngest of the 5-or-so guys I course-ski with. One guy is 59 and another 61. The 59 year old is focused, fit and no surprise, I believe he had the best score of all of us this summer, and he's still inching better.

I get about 5-10 freeskis + 5-10 course sets a season. Hope to squeak a little more in future seasons, but that's life for me with weekends @ the cottage in Canada, being a dad & the course on the next lake over. Only started course skiing again about 5 years ago, manage to pick up a ball or two most seasons. Wow. I got depressed just posting that!

Curious why the CoX SL is renamed the superlight X and if it really is "new" and if so, how? Seems like the same thing, but...

@Than - sorry. And thanks so much for the article, it's been perkolating in my head all summer. I'd come to think I'd always been stacked (been a while since a coach commented on my lean), but watching some video of myself - and reading your article -gave me a wakeup call.

@ShaneH - resist vs push reminds me of teaching someone how to do a deepwater start on one ski. @Than, you're absolutely right that we all have some compression as we hit the wake, but I think @OB and @Chef23 may be right - the act of thinking about "soft knees" or absorbing the wakes will probably do more harm than good. On rare occasion there is a skier that actively needs to unlock their legs, but for the most part, they've already figured that out by the time they're running the course @ 30mph or above. I think what you're trying to articulate is that when we're truly stacked and strong with our hips, our knees and ankles need to flex under the impact (instead of our waist)... but I think for most that will happen by default (once we're stacked), no?

@GaryWilkinson - I actually just google-images'd that. Your description made me think "I'm sure I know the photo he's talking about". Anyhow, the one I posted was the highest resolution I could find, unfortunately. It also made me appreciate the way we older folks have grown and stayed in the sport. When I was a teenager in the 80s I was @ the Canadian Nationals and George did a quick demo slalom for the news cameras. He didn't compete, just the demo. I think he was skiing 35 off at 34mph. At the time, (it seemed) there were very few older guys competing, and they were all very amateur-ish. We young guys were watching George thinking 'wow, he's so old and still skiis amazing' - he was probably 35 years old at the time. Fast forward 25-30 years and Drew Ross (who was probably with us on the dock back then, watching 'old' George's demo) ran 3 @ 41 at the Canadian Nationals a week or two ago - at 41 or 42 years of age, and I can youtube Kris Lapoint running -39 earlier this at 59 years of age. Fantastic.

'cuz real men carve their own ski out of wood

@GaryWilkinson - is this the George Athans pic? http://www.waterski-wakeboard.ca/hof/ga-action.jpg

I just want to say thank you to everyone who contributed to the various recent threads on gates and getting slack at ball 1. I'd been getting fairly tight-line ball 1s @ -28 last season and early this season... then it all went downhill and I've been getting hit every time at 1. Reading and re-reading all those threads last week, I went out Saturday AM and ran -28 off the dock. Hacked around at 32 for a few failed passes and then went back to -28 for my last pass and ran it again. What helped me most: - unload a little earlier - hang on with both hands a little longer It's so counter-intuitive - you'd think that extra tug after the second wake would take you out early (and frankly, at -15/-22, sometimes it seems to)... but as so many of you have been trying to say, it does the opposite (more-so the shorter the line gets). Watching that video of @Sethski talking about the centerline on his iPad got me to realize: the longer your ski is between you and the boat, the less it will cast outbound. Anyhow, thanks everyone, especially @Horton. I wish BoS had been around in the 80s when I was setting all my bad habits in stone ;-)

Coincidence! My brother is just getting back to course skiing & the two of us - who did nothing but free ski for the majority of the last 20 years - haven't free ski'd at all this season. He used the exact same analogy last night, but in a positive light: sometimes you have to step back from the game & the scores, and re-cement your swing at the driving range. Too much to think about in the heat of the course. And then we went for a great free ski.

Great question! I can't wait to read what others write here. For me, if I'm coming into my onside turn (late/narrow/out of position), I seem to get away with pulling long into the ball, keeping my ankles bent and turning hard-but-not-too-hard. Into my offside, I'm at a loss and anxious to see what others have to say.

Just curious (since I'm struggling with the same @ -28 and -32), what do you mean when you say: ?

At my skiing level, I have no right to comment, but it seems to me that it's one thing to be able to tell the difference between those boats, it's another to get drastically different scores. Having owned a Sporty and skied regularly behind an early 90s PS205, if your scores are way lower on those boats, you're not stacked/strong through the wakes. Assuming you're skiing 32-36 mph, yes, their wakes may be bigger compared to the 05 SN196, but they shouldn't be enough to throw you or hurt your skiing. They're frankly pretty nice wakes, all-in-all. Even with rear seats, towers and wedges, I wouldn't pass up a run behind any of those boats.

we're soooo overdue for a new powerplant platform... a lightweight V6 would be the first thing in 10-15 years to get me excited about a newer boat.

Personally, I'd see if you could get some time on a 'boat C' - see if someone in your circle has an even-less-ideal wake, spend some time with it and try to get yourself to where you can cross stacked, with confidence. I spent a lot of my teen years skiing behind a '79 Nautique - which is a pig - but if you can learn to cross those wakes with confidence (or some wakeboard-leaning hybrid from today's world), you'll stop fussing over the minor differences in wakes on any modern 3-event boat. Having been raised on late 70s boats, I don't think there is a 3-event/non-wakeboard boat since the mid-90s that I ever get concerned about. Makes me smile when I hear everyone else debating this-or-that modern boat as if they were skiing behind the titanic. Kris Lapoint ran deep 38' in the 70s on a fiberglass log going through huge rooster-tails and getting spray in his face the whole way.

For what it's worth, it didn't take me long to get used to the RS-1/Strada 'looseness', so you may not want to give up on dual stradas. It only bothered me until I realized I was skiing better ;-)