2018 67 Senate Numbers?

[DangerBoy]

Another one of my ski buddies has a 2018 67" Senate and would like to try some different fin settings to see what kind of a difference it makes for him. He's on the stock settings now. His ski is an Alloy but we're putting a standard adjustable (HO) fin on it. He skis 22' off in the 32 mph range. IMO he wheelies too much out of his turns so settings that might help him keep the tip a little lower might be what he should try first.

 

I skied on his ski once and it seemed like I had to push a lot harder on the tail to get it to turn compared to the 67" Monza I was skiing on at the time. Anybody got any non-stock setting numbers that might help make the ski a little more nimble/turn a little easier?

[Stevie Boy]

I am not sure about the pushing on the tail thing, if it was me I would leave the fin on graphite stock settings and try moving the binding back one hole, bearing in mind if you do stand on the ski correctly, there is no settings that will help.

You could get him to demo somebody elses ski to see if the same issue still exists.

[allycat]

i have a 2016 71 senate graphite when i got it felt like i was riding a boat(brand new standard settings) i moved the fin forward almost as far as it would go and and up livened the ski up made it turn better am happy to use it now.i suggest playing with the fin if your not happy with the ski

note i am not a very good skier compared to most people on here but adjusting the fin worked for me

[Chris Rossi]

I would start by doing what @Stevie Boy suggested and try moving the boots back one hole. This should make the tail of the ski easier to come through the finish of the buoy. If it feels better, try another hole and see what comes of it. Then after doing this, the fin can be looked at to fine tune.

[DangerBoy]

Thanks everyone for chiming in. @Chris Rossi and @Stevie Boy As I said earlier in my OP, my friend tends to wheelie a lot through his turns. Below is a pic of him mid turn on his Senate. See how far back on his ski the water's breaking? I realuze that could just be poor technique/body positioning but wouldn't moving the bindings back further on his ski excentuate that tendency? Maybe I'm not fully understanding how things really work but moving the boots back seems counter-intuitive to me. It seems to me that moving the bindings rearward would make the tail ride even deeper in the water and that would in turn make you have to push harder to smear the tail and get the ski through the turn.

 

I know for myself, when I went from an old 65" HO Mach 1 that I had outgrown to a 67" Monza (HUGE step up in performance), I couldn't turn the Monza at all the first few runs. I couldn't believe how hard it was to turn that ski. I ended up incrementally moving the bindings about as far forward as I could and that made a HUGE difference. (Don't recall if I did anything with the fin.) Thereafter, the Monza handled like a F1 race car. It took very little effort to make it turn while remaining very stable and foregiving and my skiing improved by huge amounts. I probably improved more over the next few years than I did over the previous 15. But this was me on my Monza and not my friend on his Senate. We have different skiing styles (I'm probably more forward on my ski and more transitional and carving in my turns whereas my friend's turns are more abrupt and jarring) so I'm not sure how much of my experience would apply here.

 

So getting back to my friend, if you're saying we should try moving the boot back a little on his Senate to make it turn with less effort I will suggest he try that but I'm just not understanding why that should work and it would go against my perhaps misguided instinct to move the bindings forward to get the tip down, make the ski ride a little flatter and make the tail run a little shallower so it takes less backfoot pressure to make it smear through the turn. Am I way off here? Can you walk me through it a bit from your much more knowledgeable point of view to help me understand where you're coming from on the moving the bindings rearward is likely to make the ski turn easier? I appreciate having the chance to learn from someone such as yourselves.

 

 

 

[Stevie Boy]

@DangerBoy sry I do not get the back foot thing to make the ski smear, the ski smears of it's own accord when you stand on it correctly, from the picture your friend cannot turn the ski because he has pulled his arms in putting all his weight on the back, the ski then becomes a piece of agricutral equipment known as a plough.

I suggest some free skiing so he can learn how to stand on his ski in the correct manner, just ski in a straight line and slowly coast from one side to another, standing upright on the ski and letting it turn of it's own accord.

I will put money on the fact that your friend is forever complaining of a sore back.

[DangerBoy]

He never has a sore back and all we do is free ski.

 

Hell. I know our technique isn't great. (I think mine is better than his though ;)) We've never had a lesson in our lives but we've been skiing together for maybe 35 years now. He was 63 last year when I took that pic. I'm a bit younger at 57. Pretty much all the people our age that we grew up with in the bay at our lake have quit skiing but we're out on the dock every morning at 7:00 a.m.to get the calm when we're at our cabins and we're still as passionate and enthusiastic about skiing as we were when we were kids. We also love the part that comes afterward when we sit out on his dock in the early morning sun or in his hot tub drinking coffee and Bailey's hashing over the terrific morning of skiing we just had. It's all very civilized, you know. ;)

 

We don't need to tweak our fin and boot settings to get one or two more buoys. For us, it's all about the joy we feel when we're out there on a gorgeous morning shredding up a glass calm lake. We just want to experiment with settings because it's interesting and fun and with a little luck maybe we'll find some setups that work better for us than the ones we're using. I figured if people would tell me some setups that worked great on their Senates we could try those instead of taking a long time to get there using only trial and error.

[Stevie Boy]

@DangerBoy just trying to help, not trying to put anybody down, it's a fact that modern skis work well when you are on the front foot or have even pressure on both feet, if you are on the back of the ski you wil very likely not feel any adjustment that you make, stock settings are good, maybe a little less depth and 2-3 thou off the length.

 

[BraceMaker]

Sounds like a lot of great fun skiing.

 

Keep in mind one photo does not mean that is a representative shot of all of your buddy's turns. But it does sort of give a flavor.

 

Basically you can picture the skier turning the ball in one of 2 ways. The body rotating around itself with the ski coming forwards as the shoulders come backwards. Or the skier coming through the turn with the shoulders and body moving forwards and the ski smearing around the turn with no rearward body rotation.

 

In that photo it is that leaning back arms up that pushed the ski forwards and up out of the water but he might always do that to make the ski turn and a usual fin adjustment won't go very far in comparison to the force of rotation his body leveraging the ski will cause.

 

Boot position will have way more "gross" influence over the feel and maybe would stimulate a different type of skiing.

 

But I do have a buddy who does that, loves it, and loves cranking disjointed monster walls of water and that's his technique too.

[BraceMaker]

Note for clarity in the second way I dont mean throwing weight forwards just not leaning back.

[DangerBoy]

@Stevie Boy No worries and I do appreciate your advice and trying to help.

@BraceMaker you're right in that one pic doesn't tell the whole story but over the years I've taken at least a few hundred pics of him cranking turns and I can tell you that pic is quite representative of most of his turns. He comes across the wake pretty neutral on the ski and then throws everything he has into a sudden, quick jarring turn that you certainly feel in the boat and throws up a huge wall of spray. A lot has to happen right in a very short span of time for everything to work out right and most of the time it does but he does tend to fall more often than I do. Often, when he falls, I can hear the twang of all that tension coming off the rope and often see the handle fly past on either side of the boat.

 

I ski differently. My style is smoother and more transitional. I start transitioning onto the inside edge sooner and build angle and pressure over a longer period of time finishing with a fair bit of angle and pressure towards the end of the turn. I stay more forward on the ski (see pic) and carve a lot more smoothly through my turns. I rarely fall, my turns aren't near as jarring and don't throw up as much spray as his even though I outweigh him by 10 lbs or more now.

 

This is me on my '06 Monza (love that ski). I don't always have the water breaking this far forward on my ski on all my turns but I do tend to keep the tip a lot lower and the water breaking a lot further forward than my friend does. I have no idea if this picture shows good form/technique or not but it's my favorite skiing pic for aesthetic reasons. Does this look like I'm doing things right or am I supposed to have more bend at the waist and my shoulders and head more level than this?

 

 

[Stevie Boy]

@DangerBoy certainly looking a lot better than your ski buddy, perhaps stand a bit taller and keep your shoulders square, try not to drop that shoulder, aim for 10 - 20 degrees lean instead of the 50-60 degrees that you have at the moment, this will help the ski carry more momentum around the turn, basically maintain more speed,your hook up would be a lot smoother, and the ski would accellerate more efficeintly giving you more control and

less work.

[BraceMaker]

@DangerBoy I would have to believe that he's basically turning hard/early and the lean back is to take up/catch that slack.

[Rednucleus]

@DangerBoy with a pic like that you NEED to start chasing balls!

[DangerBoy]

@Rednucleus LOL thanks for that. The lake we ski on is hundreds of feet deep in most places so it's pretty hard to set up a course anywhere on it. Besides that, it's a large public lake with a lot of boat traffic and since slalom courses are so rarely seen on it, 99.9% of the boaters on it wouldn't know how to recognize a slalom course if they came upon it or what the proper edicate is around them so it's almost certain that any course you could manage set up will get trashed very quickly.

 

The other thing is that we could end up skiing in any one of a number of different locations several miles apart on any given morning (the only time of the day when we can ski during the summer). Where we go to ski on any given morning depends entirely on the wind conditions. If it's a little too "rough" for us (and we're very spoiled and VERY PICKY) right where we are, we know to go to certain locations to find calm water if the wind is coming down the lake and other locations if it's coming from the opposite direction. The lake is so big that there's no one location around us where we could be fairly certain of getting calm water most days so even if we could set up a course somewhere it might not happen all that often that conditions are the way we like them where our course is set up.

 

Having said all that, I know virtually nothing about setting up courses or how portable and easy to set up they are. I assume they need to be anchored in at least a couple of places (like at both ends) to keep them from drifting all over the place and that would be tough to do quickly when we're often skiing in as much as 450 feet of water which we are most of the time. In one place we sometimes ski, the water is about 650 feet deep.

[Rednucleus]

@DangerBoy just googled your lake - how about a visit to Kamloops Waterski Club? Not too far away?? CAREFUL - those colored balls are very addictive.

[DangerBoy]

@Rednucleus That's what I'm afraid of ;)

[DangerBoy]

@Rednucleus I'm also not too sure about this idea of doing just 6 (7 if you count the gate) turns and then dropping. Deep water starting's a lotta work y'know! Especially for an old guy like me. ;) Also, we probably do 25 turns before dropping for our halftime rest during our runs. I've just barely gotten warmed up and started making some good turns by turn 7. My first four or five are like the first pancake if you catch my drift. If I want to be at my best, I need to make like 10 turns before entering into the course! I guess that's why you ballers always start at line lengths that're easy for you and work your way up to your hard passes. Too many damn starts though! ;)