escmanaze

@6balls Yes indeed, my boat is a '97 SNOB. I totally understand why it isn't popular around these parts, but out in the real world where people exist who aren't on private lakes all day every day, it becomes a very hot commodity and there aren't many out there. @ALPJr Yes indeed, the front playpen area comes down just far enough that ski tips can still get in there and slide under it, so I still get a full width of skis in there - something I wouldn't get with a walk through open bow. When I first got the boat, I kinda didn't like the step over open bow as opposed to the walk through. After 10 years, I have really come to appreciate it for the benefits it offers.

Folks here on BOS generally don't value the open bow. Out in the real world though, it commands quite a premium typically. "worth" is such an interesting word. Very hard to define in reality.

Brett, this is way exciting!!! So cool!!! Yeah, you'll definitely want to do the bridge differently than what your architect rendered there, but it's just an architect's rendering for now.

Your whole family is currently in the category of "long line, slow speeds" right now. At those longer lines and slower speeds, the Mastercraft is significantly better than the Malibu and your whole family will have a lot more fun skiing with the smaller softer wakes of the MC. If you were all shortline skiers, the preference toward MC wouldn't be so strong, but where none of you are, I would DEFINITELY veer heavily toward the MC. Anything 2014 or newer has the awesome MC wake. DO NOT buy an MC 2013 or older. They went from worst to first in this category when they came out with the new hull in 2014.

Try leaning less. Did you go slower or faster across the course? Now a little less still. Result? Now try even a little less. What are your findings?

If you haven't skied behind a real ski boat, then you will never know what you are missing. I grew up skiing behind a 1990 4 winns freedom 190. It was about as close to a ski boat as you could get while still being an i/o. I thought it was great because I didn't know any better. Now that I own my 97 SNOB, I DO NOT enjoy going back and skiing my Dad's 4 Winns at all. Hate driving it too. But if you don't know any better, you'll enjoy it just fine. You won't however, find any useful information on i/o brand differentiation here. Most folks here have less than 10 hours skiing or driving anything other than a true ski boat. And even for the folks like me who have some history - that was all 15 years ago before I saw the light and I haven't cared to revisit or keep up on the happenings of the dark side a bit, so I'm useless on that topic.

It seems like in your new system here, those of us who were previous triple panda award winners are no longer being identified as such. I'm just trying to get my trophy back to show off to everybody.

It would probably be more interesting if being a top "point getter" just got you more entries into the raffle. So then the low guy(s) still might win the raffle...but probably not.

I'm worried that it's just wishful thinking on my part, but I do feel like I'm seeing the same thing as @swc5150. It will be interesting to see what this spring brings to boats.

I know I personally don't ski well behind the 2017+ malibu. On multiple occasions I have skied it and wanted to love it and I just don't end up going down that road. I ski 28mph up to 34 mph with my best passes getting me through 15 off at 34 and trying 22 off at 34 mph. I find that a lot of the guys on this forum who say all the boats are equally as awesome do not deal with these varying wakes at longer lines and slower speeds. They only deal with shortline conditions, so things are very different in their world. Still, to get back to the heart of your issue, yes, the Prostar is the way to go right now in my opinion. Best of luck in attempting to get your club to go that way.

Thanks for saying it Horton. It needed to be said. You're a good dude. AMEN

Ok, fine, I'll be that guy. What is an S-turn?

Yeah, where you have access to Calls, It's easy to understand why you would choose that instead. But right now, Utah Lake is so low that on Monday I didn't even want to ski our lowest, least protected course as it was just a touch too shallow on one end for me. So...right now, Goode is all I got, and I will take it. Also, all those trees around there seems to be amazing wind protection. How come Calls has never planted trees around the perimeter? I think what bugged me the most was the fact that the boat was actually turning left before I ever fully made it out of the exit gates when headed south. I get that it isn't a super big deal, because once you make it around 6, only rarely can you not make it back to the gates. Still, it felt like a touch of cheating. I feel like the rushed gates didn't bother me that much at all...but I do have questions about how well the boat can actually settle into speed with them being so quick. I also am super glad they opened it up a bit and I can easily see myself skiing there a LOT more in the future.

From what I read on here it sounds like it depends on how short your line is. If I took a guess based on what I've heard here and what I experienced there it would be this: Super short line guys are going to backside that ball. For me at 34 mph and 15 off, I think I get a really good gate if I "frontside" the ball and go right in front of it, about as close as I dare get to it.

Well, with much thanks to the diagram from @Ed_Obermeier above, as well as everybody on here, I skied Goode lake and had a great time. For now, the little 0 ball right before the gates, probably messed me up more than anything, but I think that with a little practice, I could actually use it to my advantage (and then not know what to do without it right?) Funny thing is that I was worried about the entrance/exit gates being in the way when going from ball 4 to ball 5, and just like everybody else here, after doing it, I know they weren't in the way, but without video, I have no idea if that is because they were way behind or way in front of where I was skiing. Oh well, who cares as long as they weren't bugging me right?

More importantly, with each passing year recently, it becomes more and more apparent to me that I probably need to start dumping money into my old '97 SNOB instead of saving up for a Prostar replacement. As much as I love that boat, the numbers are just making the equation simply not work anymore.

@DW There are many folks out there who believe that the way the government puts together the CPI numbers is erroneous, and many believe it is intentional in an effort to hide their poor fiscal policy. So if that is the case, then of course the numbers don't pencil out using a standard CPI calculation. Now I cross my fingers and hope I didn't just veer far enough into politics to get banned. Fingers crossed.

Were they in front of you, or behind you as you crossed the wakes?

First thing you gotta do is try to take your best guess at what speed you are going to have to drop down to before you can get all 6 balls. If that speed is like 18 mph, then you need to get a Hovercraft. If you think you can get through at 22, then a Session. 24-28, maybe like a Union or a Terrain. 28-32, grab a Senate (or a Connelly V, which is a very close competitor). And so on and so forth. You'll be really sad if you buy a ski that is FANTASTIC for you at 32 or 34 mph just to find out you aren't as good of a skier as you thought you were and you actually need to slow down to like 24 to be making it through the course and so now you have the wrong ski and/or the wrong size of ski. The course is no fun when you consistently get scores of 1 and 1.5 because your ski is too small to be slowed down to match your ability level.

Does anybody know if sometimes those extra gates sitting in the middle of the course get in the way as you are going from ball to ball crossing the wakes? I'm considering an option where I start to ski at GOODE a lot more, so I'm curious about this whole 8 buoy course thing. I can imagine that every time I come around 4 ball and I'm headed toward 5 ball, that I see these annoying gates sitting there waiting to grab me as I'm crossing the wakes. But maybe the dimensions don't really work like that and they are actually not really in the way? They look like they are in the way in the diagram, then again, the diagram scale is, of course, far from actually accurate. I'm not as worried about running into 5 ball before my gates because I'm always narrow on my gates and I'm still down at 15 and 22 off. Thanks

@mbabiash To be fair, I have never skied a boat with the 6.2 to have the chance at a WOT holeshot. Maybe that would finally be the moment where I would decide we had gone too far and I want less gas? I guess I need to find somebody that has one so that I can find out. ;)

Sure, maybe... but honestly, I could make the argument that it's easier on my back to simply stand right up on the ski than to spend all that time dragging in a funny body position in the water. To each his own I suppose.

@ScottScott I'm 200 pounds, and I've always asked for as much throttle as possible on the getup, and I still haven't found a boat with too much. Some of us like to get up and out of the water really fast. I hate all that dragging nonsense. On a separate, more exceptional note, at Utah Lake, sometimes we are starting in such shallow water that the ski can't be held where it would normally be held to get up or else the tail is 6-8" deep in mud. In those cases, all the guys have their own way of dealing with it, but my personal way is that I basically start with the ski already in the horizontal position it will be in when its on top of the water. In this case especially, then I REALLY appreciate the boat getting up and out of the hole really quickly.

I look forward to hearing your review. Good gloves seem hard to find these days.

Cool product. But the comments at the end have me really intrigued. I switch from a large diameter to a less large diameter a few years ago and have liked it better. The switch also came with moving from straight to arc, so I wasn't very scientific about keeping it down to 1 variable at a time. Also, is Horton suggesting that switching it up will help keep the blisters away?