@MattP you are welcome.
@madddog very sorry to hear about your son. I hope he heals up quickly and fully. I would encourage you to look at the system for yourself also, so you are healthy to ski when your son is able to come back.
Everyone, please be smarter than me. I waited to invest in safety water skiing gear until after I was hurt. With my motorcycle I bought all of the saftey gear up front, right away. Thankfully, I have not yet needed the motorcycle safety gear.
We all know people who have been hurt waterskiing when a better release system and/or skier buoys (both for me) would have helped. Sadly we hear skiers report in on Ball of Spray all too often, "my season is over." As skiers we will buy equipmnet in the hope to pick up couple more buoys, that extra trick or two, or a few extra feet jumping. Compare that to: I do not get to ski at all again for a year!
Sorry, I am pretty passionate about helping any other skier I can to avoid not being able to ski, doing the hard physical work to come back from injury, the pain, and money wasted on medical expenses instead of being invested in boat gas!