One year old observer

[Glock]

Hi All. I have a quick question for all of you parents who have had to deal with a youngster while skiing the course. We just got our boat and I want to get out skiing as much as possible. My wife is my driver so I need to figure out what to do with our one year old son since he is with us most of the time. When we can't find someone to come along to hold him, I need an option to keep him safe in the boat. Do you see any problems with securing his car seat to the observers seat? The issue I see with this is that it is not super east to get him out if there is an emergency. Have any of you been able to engineer a quick detach system to hold your kid in place? Any suggestions to how you all have dealt with this would be appreciated.

[Chef23]

@Glock, what do you have for a boat does it have a walk through bow. If it does you can wedge the car seat in there.

[Than_Bogan]

I added a car-like seat belt to the observer's chair (which I understand is technically illegal), and then attached a car seat base to it. I then inserted the kid-in-carrier into the base.

 

I faced this away from the skier and as an added precaution I kept the carrier handle in the upright position to help catch any crazy rope scenarios. I of course always ran a shock tube for all line lengths.

 

I am very saftey-conscious and I found this setup to be low on worrying.

 

The one issue is the one you mention: It's potentially a little slow to DEtach the kid in the event of an emergency. For this, the use of the actual car set base was critical, because then I could detach the carrier from the base without having to undo the seat belt. I found that overall this was the best compromise of 1) being absolute sure she wouldn't accidentally detach and 2) being able to detach her relatively quickly if I needed to.

 

That said, I never did have to detach either of my kids in an emergency situation.

 

It was a bummer when each kid got too old for this setup. A well-contained kid is a lot easier to deal with that one who wants to walk all around the boat the instant it powers down...

[rodltg2]

I don't think there will be any real quick way to release the the seat. But what you can do is make a strap that either wraps around the base or the back of the observer seat. Attach some hooks to it that the car seat strap hooks can attach too. My son is almost two in August and this year so far he sill sit in the seat on his own with his life vest on. He even typically falls asleep.

[Glock]

I have a mastercraft x7, so I should be able to rig something up to the walk through "trap door".

[igkya]

I did something similar with my children when they were that age. I would NOT strap the child seat to the boat. This is a problem waiting to happen. A good child seat will not tip over during normal turning. The child must wear a swim vest. I also took extra precaution where and when I would ski (public lake) and did not ski as aggressively.

[rodltg2]

197 walkthru is pretty narrow ! I know our car seat would not fit in there. Another option is to get a bigger car seat which you will need eventually , so he can fit in the seat with a vest.

[MattP]

make sure you buy a 4 foot shock tube, just to be safe!

[Glock]

Just picked up a shock tube today. I'm going to strap him in the car seat with a life jacket on and have him be part of the action. I can't wait to get him on the water in a year or two.

[east tx skier]

I would suggest not strapping him in to the car seat. In a worst case scenario, if he were ejected from the boat, you would not want him strapped in to anything. The life vest will float him.

 

When ours were little, for when there wasn't an extra set of hands to hold them, we bought a cheap bouncy chair and put it on the floor next to the driver. Put the kiddo in it in his vest, but not strapped into the chair. The chair takes up the bumps well and mom or me (whoever was driving) could always get a hand on him quick.

 

Our older one later graduated to high chair booster like this pics.drugstore.com/prodimg/274390/300.JPG strapped onto the jump seat in our old 205. He wasn't strapped in, but it was perfect for keeping him in reach, but able to see.

 

With our SN, the high chair would work, so once our younger one graduated from the bouncy seat, he just sat in the observer seat with a hand on him.

 

YMMV.

[Glock]

I have a high chair just like that one. I will try that out. The only problem is our little guy does not want to sit still in the boat. I think he has to be strapped in.

[east tx skier]

We always just put a hand over our little dudes and told them in no uncertain terms to stay put. When ours was a year old, he was still in the bouncy seat. We didn't do the high chair thing until much later.

 

There is no way in this world that I would ever have strapped our kids down in a boat for the reasons previously stated. Again, that's just my kids on my boat (or really any kid that was on our boat. You have to determine what is an acceptable level of risk for yours on your boat.

[jipster43]

As stated before the real problem comes when they start being more mobile. I sure am glad my daughter is five, can swim, and listens to me when she's in the boat.