Waternut

I voted but it does make me go hmmmmm when things like waterskiing, rock climbing, and surfing are being compared to a lot of those other things.

First things first... make sure you have adequate ventilation under the cover. If you've got that covered, continue. I live in GA so I understand the humidity issues although we don't see them quite as much as you guys in FL. One thing that helped me was spraying the cover with some waterproofing spray. In fact, I about to treat it again but I need it to stop raining everyday first. It helps the fabric wick the water away a little faster so it will dry faster. If that doesn't help, a fan really does make a difference provided you have adequate ventilation. Yes you're circulating humid air but 90% humid air is still drier than condensation and the air outside is almost always going to be a little drier than under the cover so it's going to help...a lot!

I do think a lot of people use standard settings or mimic settings from snow skiing or something similar and just blindly trust that this is the best for them. Yes I've been skinned up and bashed by my Reflex binding/ski. I even set my binding at a very low setting from the start and had some issues with it hurting my ankle. I'm 6' tall and 185lbs and I have had my Reflex set below the minimum setting for the last 2 years. I pre-released once and that was when I initially tried going lower than the lowest setting and went too far trying to help my ankle problem. Mostly I've been skinned up by the ski when I blow the tail and then sliding over the ski. Sure that's most likely only going to happen with Reflex or some other mechanical release binding. However, I still think sliding over the ski is preferable to not releasing when I blow the tail and have the ski dig back in unexpectedly...that crap hurts!

I've had my Reflex boot for 3 years now and the only place I see corrosion is at the base of the Silveretta arms but most of that was because the crappy machine screws were cutting into the arms. Once I changed to a properly fitting sleeves bolt, even that went away. I use my ski 3-5 times a week between early March and early November. When I'm done, I store my ski inside my house and upside down with the liner removed. I almost never remove the shell. Be real careful with any kind of lube...especially spray lube as you might alter the release tension. I'd use grease if anything.

That's awesome and if you want to redesign your track, you just have to wait until the next snow and you have a clean slate.

Very true. My first set of gloves was pretty cheap from Dick's Sporting Goods and they lasted forever. Then again, I was an open water skier in high school just looking for something basic.

I live on a public lake and occasionally ski a public course. I also ski a private lake with a guy who just charges a minimal amount for sets with no annual fee. I guess my dock fee is technically around $150 a year but that borders on the same lines as mortgage and taxes so I didn't include it. I haven't really kept track of upkeep of the course on the public lake because I usually buy the parts and in return get extra gas added to my boat or picked up on someone else's boat.

I tried modifying a black cuff Reflex boot by cutting the top cuff down like many others. Sounded like a good idea but I hated it and it also made it difficult to get my foot into the boot with a liner on. @liquid d I damaged my ankle pretty bad by a bunch of tail skips like you mentioned. It was a couple years ago. It was bad enough that it was hindering my mountain biking throughout the winter because my ankle was so weak and I struggled to handle the bumps/jumps. I switched to the white cuff boot 2 seasons ago, lowered the release setting, and tightened the flexion strap as tight as it would go. My ankle is almost completely back to normal now.

Of all the things I buy for waterskiing, I'd still say that waterski gloves are probably the most budget item I use even at $90 for the Radar Boa gloves. I think I did around 80+ sets last summer with another 30+ runs on open water and maybe 70+ sets the year before with at least 60+ days on open water.....on the same gloves. The gloves are still in good shape with the exception of the soft part on the back of my thumbs where I always grab to pull the gloves off. So easily 240+ times on the water for $90 gloves.... Sure as heck beats a $100+ vest that loses floatation after one season and a $1500 ski that you may be able to sell for half that after a season.

@Web I think what you may be feeling is not the inability to lift your heel but more of the restriction to flex your ankle forward enough. Even soft bindings do restrict ankle flex a little and if it's enough to hinder you from flexing forward and staying balanced, it can be a problem. If you don't have a lot of flexibility in your ankle that can also prevent you from weighting your front foot enough which can cause tail riding and waist breaking... You can look up simple ankle flexibility tests. My ankles have pretty good flexibility but one of my ankles has more resistance than the other so it's harder for me to get that range of motion.

Am I missing something? Everyone talks about how much safer and more advanced snow ski bindings are over waterski bindings. So if you're using snow ski boots, why on earth wouldn't you use snow ski bindings? Could use just a single binding for the front of the front boot and rear of the rear boot and then just keep the boots locked together.

I was looking at Goode ski's and poles recently. I've skied the Vail resorts 21 days in the last year and never once saw Goode ski's on the slopes. In my mind, they are far too expensive to experiment with when there is little to no information floating around about them. Meanwhile, there are much cheaper ski's that are the talk of the town and everyone loves. For $99 though, I wish I had seen that deal before I bought a new set of snow ski's.

I really want a unit like this for waterskiing and also snow skiing. I've been seriously considering Trace because it's been around for a while and I like their Trace Snow app for snow skiing. However, I must say that I'm a bit gun shy because Trace's customer service is non-existent. Here's an example of a simple question I asked last year (read bottom to top). I know that's the free app and not the $200 device but the app is the same for snow skiing regardless. Since you can't delete data yourself, I also asked about getting an accidental Trace session deleted about a month ago as it messes up my stats and got nothing but crickets.

Have owned 4 covers over the years and dealt with several others on boats I've used. If the cover fits really tight, the condensation gets trapped and mildew happens. If you have big enough vents, even a vinyl cover will be fine. For reference, a vent the size of your fist on each side are not big enough IMO. If the cover fits too tight and you can't get vents big enough, have a small fan on a timer under your cover to circulate the air enough to get it out through the smaller vents. The last cover I bought was from boatcoversdirect.com. They have a lot of options on closeout covers for pretty cheap and one may work perfectly for you.

I loved waterskiing but didn't know anyone with a ski boat. Knew a few friends who owned wakeboard boats and never went out. I figured a direct drive was totally out of the question but looked forever for something in my meager price range. Eventually found this 86 Dixie Super Skier and with A LOT of elbow grease, brought it back from the dead and continued to use it for 4 more years.

Take this with a grain of salt as my opinions are based on pictures and I've never skied or even held one of these boots. Plateless or not, looks a lot thicker than my even Reflex boot with a plate and a thin liner. 6mm screws or roughly 1/4" is a big screw so in a perfect world, it will be plenty in pure tension when the load is shared. As an engineer who recognizes we don't live in a perfect world, the boot will never be in pure tension and the bending or rocking will ultimately be the death of it in my mind. This is where wakeboard binding have a HUGE advantage over ski boots. Wakeboard boots have a very wide footprint to resist rocking. Waterski boots do not. Just for the record, landings on wakeboards do not really stress the mounting screws that much as they're only in shear from the stopping/sliding forces. Now catching the front or back edge on a wakeboard is very close to pure tension and at 30mph crossing the wake, it can be pretty harsh and I've seen a few wakeboard bindings tear out this way but not many. However, the really bad falls where the wakeboarder catches their front edge at speed (more like a waterski OTF) are the really violent crashes that usually tear out one insert and snap the binding on the other side. Best of luck to HO and thanks for continuing to progress the sport and try new ideas but I feel like this one needs some more work.

Hmm shouldn't make a difference but you might want to pay attention and see if just one of the shells is giving you problems.

I guess it does depend on the fit you want. The small for me did not ride up much when just floating but most times I dropped in the water, it would slide up a little. 6-8 passes meant 6-8 readjustments which is unacceptable in my book. I bought an O'Neil checkmate vest size med and although it chafed my arms some, it stays put. Loved the old Radar Decibel vests but hate the vapors.

A previous poll got me wondering what percentage of people on here ski what. If you primarily ski both public and private lake courses, pick the one you ski the most.

Did you heat mold the liner or are you running it as it came?

@hemlock Don't know if you ordered your vest already but I'm a 42" chest and I thought a size small was way too big for me in the Radar vapor vest.

Yeah I don't have a real use for the pop up tents but at that price, I'll find a use.

Significantly affect fin settings? Not sure about that but it will significantly affect the way the ski handles. The wing will have a tendency to make the tail ride a little lower which is turn make the ski tip ride a little higher. There are multiple different fin adjustments to accomplish the opposite of that. However, I think it's worth trying out the ski with the recommended settings even without a wing before you go messing with it since one of those adjustments may be better than another for your style.

@skinut I totally disagree with your last statement. I really didn't read most people's posts as being "it'll never work". The way I read most posts was...it's a great idea and many of us want it but the technology just isn't there yet and here's why. You can't problem solve if you don't know the problems and identifying these kinds of problems from the skiing community is what the smart people need to potentially develop something like this in the future.

I would think a puller prop at the front of the boat would track better and possibly offer some unique features that may or may not be beneficial. However, I honestly think that anything that makes competition boats even more expensive than they are now is a terrible idea.