escmanaze

I'm on a 97 SN with the TSC1 hull. I typically run the course at 15 off and 28-34 mph. The first time I skied a NWZ hull, i was very suprised at how hard it was. I was just out free-skiing, so I shortened the rope considerably - I think to 28 or 32 off and it was a good bit better. To be fair, my boat usually only has 1-3 people in it and that NWZ that day had probably 5 or 6 people in it, so it certainly wasn't a perfect comparison. I would like to try it again some day with fewer people in it to see what it is like back to back with mine. My advice would certainly be that it may be a great boat, but ski it before you buy it to just make sure.

Obviously next lesson is a better gate so he doesn't spend the whole time catching up. Work in progress.

@Bruce_Butterfield Here you go. We took it down to 11 mph and he kept making progress. 2 days ago he made it all the way through at 11 and by the last pass yesterday he was making it all the way through at 13 mph. Hooray!!! And for those curious, progress is being made toward getting up on 1 ski, but you gotta keep having fun on two until you're there.

smallest wake at 26.7? That was not my experience with the 18 & 17. Who knows, maybe the 19 is different. Fingers crossed. That would be sweet.

Wait the US Gear handle floats? say what?

@owennibley Oh!!!! You are Andy!! Alright, nice to meet you on the old BOS. Thanks again for the tow!!

@owennibley You ski at Call's? Yes indeed, that is it, the white rope and black handle. That is great news (tentatively of course). Hopefully the guy that invited me will remember to check next time he's up there and see it there. Thanks much, that's encouraging. And yes, for my next handle I might just go radius and try it out. I think I might like it. We'll see.

Thanks everybody, this is very helpful. @ScotChipman1 it was up at Call's Fort. I'm in communication with the guy who invited me. He is going to check. Hopefully it's still there. We will see. I may very well buy a new one regardless for various reasons. Thanks everybody. Keep em coming please.

12" or 13"

Also, I'm up for size recommendations as well. I'm 5'11" with hands that are big enough to palm a grippy basketball and not big enough to palm one that isn't grippy. What in the world even is the right way to determine the size I should be using?

Hi Guys, I got invited to ski a private lake. Brought my handle. Left it there. Dummy. Anyway, in the market for a new one. I would love to hear any feedback positive or negative out there. P.S. Sorry, if thread is a complete repeat. I couldn't find any with the search function, and figure it probably doesn't hurt to update it every now and then anyway.

@Drago Yes, you are definitely right. There's a fair amount of that as well. However, I think the two groups have some very common threads. The first is shared boat ownership. Those groups you're seeing - most of them do not have one single owner on that boat. Second is that they are boating for primarily social reasons and not primarily competitive / self-improvement / skill mastery reasons. I guess the date and mini-golf analogy would be even more closely related in this case. Would you agree with that?

@skinut Here is how it goes down in Utah. 3 guys are business partners and they decide to go in on a boat together. Right there, a 200k boat is a 70k boat. They all have a wife and 3-5 kids. They only use the boat about 5-7 times per year, plus a weeklong trip to Lake Powell, so it's easy to share with 2 others - especially when they are your business partners and you see them every day and are used to sharing things with them. So on those 5-7 times per year, they invite one other family in their neighborhood of about the same size, so now we have a group of 4 adults and almost 10 kids heading to the lake together for a day of fun in the sun. So they get there and load the boat in and they all start surfing or trying to surf. The water is pretty rough as our lakes are really crowded, so even just getting to where you can let go of the rope turns out to be pretty challenging on such rough water. They spend the whole morning with everybody taking a turn of about 10 minutes at surfing and then they have some lunch out on the lake. Once that's done, now it's afternoon, the breeze has picked up, and the place is a madhouse so they break out the tubes. They usually tube 2-3 at a time, so now each kid gets a good half hour or so on the tubes while the adults just watch and by about 4-5 pm all the kids are smoked. Now the adults might take one more quick turn on the surf before they go, but probably not. More likely, they just leave at 5 or 6 and grab some dinner together on the way home and get home right about a good time to start getting ready for bed etc. Under the scenario above, nobody is ever "mastering" wakesurfing, and frankly, it was never about that to them. These are just simply folks who just want to make and have friends for themselves and their kids and they just want to beat the heat on a hot saturday but first and foremost, it's all about socializing. The whole experience is totally social and has nothing to do with mastering a skill or anything like it. It's like going mini-golfing. Nobody goes mini-golfing because they really want to get good at it. They go mini-golfing because there is a girl they want to take on a date and they need some excuse of something to do that they can call a date.

@skibrum54 I bought a boat in 2012. I got it in the course and got it mapped and it did the same thing. The way @skiboyny described it is right on. I lost my patience and just un-mapped my courses. Dummy. Like you I should have just gone into classic or even RPM or something. Anyway, I did just barely buy the version 9 upgrade and I haven't even installed it yet. Now some of these other comments have me really hoping that it's even the 9.2 upgrade. I guess I'll see when I go home tonight. Either way, here is to hoping that it really fixes the issue. I'll keep updated here as I find out more.

From my perspective, I have to believe wakeboard sales to be WAY down. Surfing is up. Way up. As a skier, I think it works to my benefit though as the surfers need deeper water and know they need deeper water so they stay even farther away from my precious little waterski course.

Holy Cow I just looked up that lake on Google Earth. Looks like paradise. That's incredible. And yes, count me among those who love basic color schemes and tiny wakes for long line slow speed folks. Great post.

@hchwilson Good to see you here. Always refreshing to see people on here who aren't the standard typical middle age to old age dude. Be careful thinking that the wide skis can't also handle some aggression. This video of Horton on the Katana certainly would argue otherwise. As I understand it, the Katana is the closest replacement of the old P6, although it definitely isn't a drop in direct replacement. I've been amazed at the P6 that my Dad got about 3 or 4 years ago. My Dad loves it because at 73, it's easy to get up and it's just a nice solid smooth ride for his overall gentle style. However, for a few years, my nephew (18 yo now) didn't have any other ski to learn on than "Grandpa's P6" (69") and after a summer of skiing a bunch on that ski, I was amazed to see how aggressively a 17 year old kid at 120 pounds was ripping on that giant ski. It reminded me a lot of Horton on that video at 22 off and 30 mph. The kid was tearing it up on a ski that was way too big for him and way too wide to be skiing that aggressively. But he was!!! After saying all those great things about the P6, I'll have to also say, I'm on my second senate and still loving it. Then senates are super awesome as well. So anyway, that's one of the nice things about the radar line. They have a nice progression all the way from the fattest skis to the skinniest. From there, you just find where on that spectrum you want to be in the compromise between a ski that is "easy" for both getting up and for staying on top of the water at slower speeds and a ski that is snarling, aggressive and ready to flex muscle and hit the throttle hard.

They already have the #1 most sought after slalom hull. Additionally, the only other competitor to have ever had the #1 slalom hull just released a new hull and appears to, so far, still be in the #2 slot. If you're already on top, seems crazy to go about changing too much. Maybe it would be like a TSC1 to TSC2 type change? Nautique was on top back then and was smart enough to only make very small tweaks instead of large changes. I would imagine Mastercraft would be smart enough to take somewhat of a similar path.

Trick got left behind the second wakeboarding came around and it decided not to evolve with the times. All the young crowd decided it was cooler to do/watch this: than it was to do/watch this: Wakeboarding embraced big boats full of people and big wakes with new creative tricks with lots of style, including various grabs and tweeks and jibs - just what kids of the 90's wanted, while trick skiing, already established and full of purists, seemed to shun all that for a more traditionalist approach, which appealed to very few kids of the 90's. The same thing happened in the 90's on the snow as we saw this: get replaced by this: Again it just had something to do with aspects of counter culture, style, creativity, or something. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it definitely caused a seismic shift. As far as jumping goes, who in their right mind would want to jump 200 feet distance with about 30 feet of height onto a landing that is completely flat that looks and feels like this: Very few people, that's who. Even in snowskiing, this: has been largely replaced by this: For probably a lot of the same reasons mentioned above. So if anybody on water really wants to go huge and put up with a rock solid flat landing, they seem to be trending to this instead: As for slalom, the appeal hasn't been replaced by any newer version. It is much like Nascar or Formula 1 competition. It is a race of speed and turning and is comparable to racing in that it gets in the blood and folks become obsessed and go crazy over thousandths of inches and hundredths of seconds. There's just a certain percentage of humans that are naturally inclined to go crazy on that stuff and here we are.

A filet at Ruths Chris is $46. A filet at Texas Roadhouse is $19. When you come on here and rant and rave about how it's such a ripoff to go to Ruths Chris because Texas Roadhouse offers the "same dang thing" for less than half price, I promise it says a lot more about you than it does about Ruths Chris.

Thanks for the help guys. I will plan to pick it up next time I'm down there.

I'm not sure what kind of ski she is on, but I would certainly make sure it's a good beginner ski and not some aggressive ski. I think I also disagree with the "stand up straight" thing. I'm not a pro ski coach, so take my advice for about what you're paying for it. I just think that standing up straight is something that people start to do once they have a little better balance. If the trouble is balance, standing up straight will just make it worse.

Hi Guys, I'm coming off the HO Costco special. Local shop has a radar x vest 2.0 in my size that I'm really heavily considering. I'm liking that it's kinda like a comp vest, but still has USCG rating. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Thanks I'm sorry if this has already been covered. I tried the search function and couldn't find anything. If there's already a thread please just point me toward it.

@Spatch17 Orlando was mostly right, but not quite exactly correct on the details. The Triple panda doesn't so much relate to how many times you've received pandas. It instead relates to the severity of the Panda being doled out. Think back to the Christmas Story how the Triple Dog Dare was like the highest level of dare you could possibly go to. Well, just the same, the triple panda is only awarded when somebody says like literally the stupidest thing @Horton could possibly imagine them saying. So there is no quadruple panda as the triple panda is the highest award one can receive. As far as what is the Panda. It's a gif of a panda, essentially demonstrating "SMH" or "facepalm" or whatever other reaction people might have to somebody who has said something so stupid that you can't really even respond except to just visibly show your frustration at their stupidity. That's the best explanation I got. Now Horton can come in and correct me where I'm wrong.

Very cool for Nautique to do this. Bummer they don't have a stop in Utah but...I get it...we are a pretty small market.