Troubles with Portable Course

[Simojo]

We have a portable course that we install in our semi-private lake. The lake is approximately 25-30' deep in some areas and when the wally's come out with their tubes they have a tendency to knock off buoys. Unfortunately, when they knock off a turn buoy, the end of the pipe sinks to the bottom and causes the other end of the pipe by the diamond to stick up out of the water. This creates a potentially dangerous situation for skiers, tubers, or boats and if someone/something were injured/damaged by the pipe, we may lose the privilege of putting the course in our lake. Are we missing something or installing it incorrectly? We do have the open-cell foam strips inside one section of pipe per turn buoy, but I assume that is just to help keep the sag out of the pipes, not float them.

 

Any suggestions?

 

I suppose we could lengthen all the ropes on the buoys and boat guides to 10' or 15' so that the pipes don't have so far to pivot to reach the bottom, plus it would give the other end by the diamond more room to come up without breaking the surface. Or we could go to the time/expense of putting in a permanent course.

 

Thanks for the help!

[Ed_Obermeier]

You're not installing it incorrectly @Simojo. That's just one of the issues with a suspended/floating-style course - take off the turn buoy, that end of the arm goes down and the other end of the arm (outer boat guide end) tends to pivot to the top.

 

Just off the top of my head. Lengthening the buoy lines could help somewhat, however the inner boat guide ball's buoy line is still going to be the limiting factor in how far the opposite end of the boat gate arm section will be below the surface. It would need to be pretty long (10+ feet) and that still leaves the outer boat guide ball floating around limply where someone could snag its buoy line with a prop etc. In 25 - 30 feet of water longer buoy lines would solve the issue of the outter end of the boat lane coming to the surface though. You might also try putting water in the turn balls (or counterweighting them) to get them to sit low enough that the tuber's ropes etc can't get under the ball as easily and knock it off. Hope this is somewhat helpful.

 

Cheers, Ed

[skiboyny]

How about a sub buoy? Or some flotation on the arm perhaps a noodle? The trick is finding enough flotation without it being too much.

[501Brandon]

Half filled milk jugs are a good solution (and cheap) when tied about 10-12 inches from the pipe about 6 feet in from the endo of the turn ball. if you can take a little time and use a light coat of RTV on the cap it could last a year or two before taking on the extra water... Use as a test jug to ensure your depth is right and you gain the correct floatation height as noted by @skiboyny. I was a member of a club on a public lake and this was the solution for that course and it worked pretty good.

[boarditup]

Install the green INT inner turn buoys and half-fill the orange turn buoy with water. The INT buoy will prevent the arm from dropping too much if the orange buoy is hit. Half filling the orange buoy with water will make them much more durable from incidental hits.