USA Water Ski is pleased to announce that it will hold the inaugural USA Water Ski GrassRoots National Championships on Saturday, September 18, 2010 at Lake Grew in Polk City, Florida. Lake Grew, a world-record capability water ski venue, is adjacent to the American Water Ski Educational Foundation’s Water Ski Hall of Fame and USA Water Ski headquarters. Any water ski (slalom and tricks) athlete or barefoot (slalom and tricks) water ski athlete who has participated in a GrassRoots Series event in 2010 is eligible to compete in the event. A GrassRoots Fun Day, in which participants will have the opportunity to ski with a professional water ski athlete will be held at the same site on Sunday, Sept. 19.
ORLANDO, FLA (August 31, 2010)—For the fifth year in a row, Nautique is the recipient of the NMMA’s prestigious CSI award. This award recognizes Nautique’s excellence in customer satisfaction in the Inboard Watersports Boats category, as part of the 2010 Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) program.
The CSI is an independently-measured standard for accurately assessing customer satisfaction. For 2010, the Marine Industry CSI Award program surveyed over 40,000 boat buyers regarding satisfaction with the boats and engines they purchased between April 2009 and March 2010. Participating manufacturers were required to survey all new boat buyers during this given period. In order to receive the prominent CSI award, recipients had to consistently uphold marks of 90 percent or higher in customer satisfaction during the last year.
Who says all surfers are gnarly? A University of California at San Diego engineering graduate student (and amateur surfer) is using his two loves -- science and surfing -- to figure out what makes the perfect board. According to Wired, Benjamin Thompson equipped a surfboard with eight sensors and a microprocessor that gathers data, like water velocity, and relays it back to an onshore laptop. Thompson and his team want to figure out what makes for optimal flexibility -- the point at which a board bends perfectly for a surfer on a wave.
In the surfing community, there are two schools of thought; some prefer a rigid board and others like a more flexible one. But, the problem is, there's no system informed by hard data that can let surfers know whether or not a board will meet their standards before buying it. Thompson wants to change that by correlating the hard data his surfboard collects with a rider's reported experience. This, he hopes, will provide surfers with a foolproof way to rank boards. In his next trial, Thompson will attach 50 sensors, accelerometers, strain transducers and gyroscopic instruments to a surfboard, which will then store the data on an attached flash drive, in order to get a better idea of what makes the "perfect surfboard."
Thompson should be careful about bringing science to this zen hobby, though. If his experiment is a success, people might start taking surfers more seriously, and the slacker image that surfers have (barely) worked to cultivate since the '60s could be destroyed.
ST. PETERSBURG — As delighted spectators watched on the beach, a man buckled into a harness and kite and flew 350 feet above St. Pete Beach.
Hal Elgin couldn't see them, however. By the time he was in the air he was stone cold unconscious.
Doctors would later tell him he had been flying with a broken neck, an injury sustained from a fall earlier the same day.
When his wife turned the boat, he failed to adjust and plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico.
A priest at Palms of Pasadena Hospital gave last rites. The hospital told Mr. Elgin's family that he had died.
That was 35 years ago. Since then, Mr. Elgin, the Tampa Bay area's pioneer of trick water skiing, hang gliding and parasailing, has been injured many more times and gotten back up.
On Sunday, Mr. Elgin , a St. Petersburg firefighter and daredevil, died for the second and final time. He was 75. His ripples of influence have spread as far as Europe and Japan.
"Basically anyone within a 150-mile radius of St. Petersburg who has skied professionally at Cypress Gardens, Sea World Orlando or any of the professional ski shows in the country at one time or another have learned from or skied with Hal in ski shows," said Gary Stout, a former top-tier water skier in California and Florida.
His legendary exploits include skiing 1,600 miles with nearly a dozen other skiers from St. Petersburg to the 1964 New York World's Fair. The St. Petersburg World's Fair Water Ski Team cut across the Cross Florida Barge Canal and up the coast. Skiers went over ocean swells higher than the boat, through fields of jellyfish and around debris that included floating logs.
After moving from Ohio in 1953, Mr. Elgin taught himself to ski. Following a stint in the Air Force, he opened a ski school in St. Pete Beach to help get through St. Petersburg Junior College. He founded an amateur team, the Aquamaniacs, and a business, Hal Elgin Holiday Water Sports.
ABBOTSFORD, B.C. - Breanne Wagner returned to a familiar setting and successfully defended her senior title in women's slalom Friday at the Canadian water skiing championships.
"(Abbotsford) is where I lived as a teenager and really improved my skiing," said Wagner, 26, who now resides in Surrey, B.C.
"I was very happy with my performance. My season has been inconsistent this year and I really wanted to come here and get the victory."
While Wagner is an established veteran in the sport, Taryn Grant of Winnipeg showed why she is an emerging star as she won the women's junior slalom. The 15-year-old took the silver medal in jump earlier this month at the world junior championships.
"It went pretty well," said Grant, who also won jump and was fourth in tricks this week. "I didn't have my best pass but I got through it."
Vancouver SunABBOTSFORD - World champion Whitney McClintock of Cambridge, Ont., Stephen Collins of Toronto and Kevin Melnuk of Mississauga, Ont., were among the winners in the open category events on Saturday that concluded the 60th Canadian National Water Ski Championships.
In women’s slalom overcame, McClintock overcame a bobble in Friday’s senior competition to take the open crown.
“Everything felt really good during my run,” said McClintock, 20, about her slalom performance. “I made sure I was aggressive. I’ve had a season where I haven’t skied as much as last year and it was really important for me to come here and get the victory with a satisfying performance.”
Collins meanwhile took his first career overall open title and added a victory in tricks. He was also second in jump and sixth in slalom.
“This was my big goal for the season,” said Collins, 20. “Even though I didn’t train as much as I would have liked I knew I had the ability to get the title. I was happy with all my events although I would have liked to have gone a little farther in jump.”
Melnuk took the open jump crown for the second straight year. He has also been busy this season running his water skiing school in Jerseyville, Illinois this summer.
“I didn’t get the distance I wanted but it’s great to repeat,” said Melnuk, 22. “I made some changes hoping I could go further but unfortunately I wasn’t able to carry enough speed on the turn.”
USA Water Ski is pleased to announce that it will hold the inaugural USA Water Ski GrassRoots National Championships on Saturday, September 18, 2010 at Lake Grew in Polk City, Florida. Lake Grew, a world-record capability water ski venue, is adjacent to the American Water Ski Educational Foundation’s Water Ski Hall of Fame and USA Water Ski headquarters. Any water ski (slalom and tricks) athlete or barefoot (slalom and tricks) water ski athlete who has participated in a GrassRoots Series event in 2010 is eligible to compete in the event. A GrassRoots Fun Day, in which participants will have the opportunity to ski with a professional water ski athlete will be held at the same site on Sunday, Sept. 19. 
ORLANDO, FLA (August 31, 2010)—For the fifth year in a row, Nautique is the recipient of the NMMA’s prestigious CSI award. This award recognizes Nautique’s excellence in customer satisfaction in the Inboard Watersports Boats category, as part of the 2010 Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) program.
ST. PETERSBURG — As delighted spectators watched on the beach, a man buckled into a harness and kite and flew 350 feet above St. Pete Beach.
ABBOTSFORD, B.C. - Breanne Wagner returned to a familiar setting and successfully defended her senior title in women's slalom Friday at the Canadian water skiing championships.
ABBOTSFORD - World champion Whitney McClintock of Cambridge, Ont., Stephen Collins of Toronto and Kevin Melnuk of Mississauga, Ont., were among the winners in the open category events on Saturday that concluded the 60th Canadian National Water Ski Championships.