Timr71

@mmosley899 Is that the one from the World Games? I saw that it was still tied up to the dock when I drove past there this past Saturday.

Hi @thepacerdude, I was hoping that someone else with more information than I have would have replied by now. I'm down in Birmingham, about an hour south of Smith Lake, but it's not our home lake. My son's girlfriend's family have a house there though. I have heard of the course across from Rock Creek Marina too, but I have never laid eyes on it. And I did some searching around to see if I could find some confirmation that it's actually in the water, but no dice so far. When are you planning on being here? I might get up there sometime soon. Where are you looking to stay on the lake? Hope all is going well. I'll do what I can to help out. -Tim

Really nice work! Looks amazing. Enjoy!

@Tandcc Thanks, that's great! We have relatives in that area. We'll reach out to you after we get some time behind our own boats here. Thanks

RH / LFF - but I'm on odd combination of ambidextrousness. My Dad is a lefty and and I write right handed. But a handwriting analyst told me that my hand writing was so bad because I should be left handed. I played a lot of soccer as a youth, left footed predominately until I was able to get my right to catch up. I'm left eye dominate, so I have to shoot lefty, but played baseball and golf righty. I've been skiing LFF since 4th grade. I can't imagine what it would feel like to swap it around.

@ErikBerghiller - Thanks much. I'll let you know. I might see my cousin this weekend as we get ready to pull boats out for the summer.

I know this is a long shot, but I have to ask anyway, so here goes. My cousin is considering buying one of these as he lost access to a course on his lake some time ago. He would like to ski behind it once if at all possible. Does anyone have one of these that is located in Central or East Tennessee, or Alabama? If yes, we'd love to cross paths for a quick set just to see how it all works in reality. Thanks in advance.

@BraceMaker - Thanks. It was sketchy for sure and was definitely too close for comfort. I don't think any of us realized how close it was until it was happening. And they weren't completely soaked. We just wondered how they didn't see 3 comp ski boats sitting at the mouth of the course waiting to pull in and out. But for sure, next time...idle over and see if it can be prevented differently.

Worse, if we are there first, and running back and forth---some of these folks will slowly drift into the course while we are shortening up the line. We had a bass boat wedge themselves in between the shore and ball 2. They left pretty quickly after a wall of water landed in their boat when Sara rounded the 2 ball. In our defense, we tried to tell them that they needed to move out of the splash zone.

If you do go with tower bimini, the one you're looking for is under deck mounted on their website. Give them a call and talk to Danny. (I'm assuming he still works there, he helped with mine.) They can set you up with a much lower bimini that has that factory look. Seems like I did a bunch of measuring and filled out a form for my order. When I got mine...it fit perfect.

@swbca Agreed. My boat is the same, open bow Ski Centurion Falcon. I basically don't let anyone ride up there. Sometimes in the right conditions, I'll let my daughter sit up there. She's grown though and weighs about 105 lbs.The configuration of my boat meets my family requirements. My open bow basically functions as a front sun pad, a place were the kids can sit or lay out when we're tied up spending a day out of the lake. That allows me to have a tournament ski boat with some additional functionality. And, I agree, renting such a boat to an inexperienced driver seems like a risk. They might have been better served with an open bow run about of some sort.

I almost asked if it was down by posting on the ball of spray Facebook page, but I refrained.

@VermontSkier - I had your exact injury happen to me on Friday June 18th of this year. My fall sounds just like yours. Going into ball two after crossing the wake. Yada yada yada, my left foot (front) ripped out of my boot. My ankle looked pretty bad with both swelling and bruising. I did the ice / ibuprofen routine and didn't ski any more. 8 days later I went to my ortho, he said to take it easy and do the usual stuff, stretching, strengthening, etc. At my last check up, he wasn't pleased with how it looked, so I got another MRI and was sent off to PT. MRI showed severe bone bruising. That's what's causing it to still be swollen larger than my right. I've had 5 PT sessions and that's helping a lot. I was able to run 600 m on the track yesterday. My range of motion is slowly coming back. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to resume my running training for my fall races starting next week maybe. My ankle hurts enough that I think that it would be a struggle to even get it in my ski boot. I may try some easy skiing in a week or two. Good luck with your recovery. I will pass on this...my ortho said that I had a probable partial tear of such and such ligament. He's always said that I could do stuff like ski, run, bike, play tennis, etc as long as there isn't pain. But he also cautioned that if I tore the such and such ligament, he'd have to do surgery and that it would never be the same. BTW, my sports ortho is highly regarded. I'm in Birmingham, AL...home of sports orthopedists. Pro athletes come here to get fixed up.

Thought about this thread yesterday when I was at PT. The tech made me balance on a foam pad with my feet heel to toe. I remarked that this is my ski position and that it was what I was doing when I hurt my ankle. Then she had me switch my feet...right foot forward. Totally awkward. Anyway, is anyone in this thread currently in PT too. I go back today. At least I'm going to have stronger ankles when all of this is over.

Grade II sprain of my left ankle. Happened about 3 weeks ago...trying to get a set in on a Friday evening before a storm rolled in. First pass yard sale going into ball 2. Been relegated to boat driver / mechanic. Drinking: Elijah Craig on the rocks. Going back to my ortho on Monday for a follow up, not optimistic that he's going to give me the all clear.

Hi @DP70 - I have a 1993 Ski Centurion Open bow Falcon. I can concur with what everyone is saying here. I'm a novice 50 year old course skier and I like the wake on my boat for skiing. We use the boat as a family boat too. The open bow was what sold my wife and allowed me to get a 3-event tournament boat. We're on a big public lake and the ride is rough! Like rough enough that you won't want to go for a long ride in choppy conditions. We tend to play in areas where we know the water will stay smooth. If we have to transit the big water I many times follow my friends in their 23 ft Cobalt. Keeps me from being beat to death. The front open part of the boat is quasi-usable. It's a great place to lay out and relax when on anchor...and I let my daughter ride up there when there's no other boats around. But she rode up there once with a boyfriend she brought to the lake and when I pulled back to idle speed, I had water come over the low slopped nose. And crossing your own wake on a pick up requires some precision even with the front area empty. Engine wise, I just put vortec heads and a new intake on the 5.7. Things seem to be a lot perkier now, but I've only driven it once since that work was done. There's a few more HP to be found if you're willing to do some engine work. My cousin owns a 1996 Falcon Sport that he ordered from the factory...his stringers are original and solid, but that because it's been garaged it's entire life. My boat had a full stringer up rebuild. It started life (in our family) as a barn find that had been run aground, so lots of work had to be done. I hope this helps. The Sanger is a great boat too.

Hopefully you're getting some snow skiing done at Snowbasin. That's one of my favorite mountains. Are they having a decent snow year? I know snow has been scarce across the west this year.

I don't see the article as "every kid gets a trophy" either. I see it as an indictment of the "travel sports" arms race. My son's story is similar too...started in T ball at age 3, yes age 3 and it was super fun, just something to do. Fell in love with baseball but also played soccer, flag football, basketball, and ran cross country. But always focused on baseball. Just after 9U everyone left the park/rec baseball world to join travel teams. From that point on my son only played baseball. We moved travel organizations a couple of times. Lots of money and politics were involved but he stayed focused on the game and his development. It all culminated a summer ago. My son played for a travel organization from the adjacent state. They played in three national championship tournaments, 2 for Perfect Game and one for USA baseball. He was plying up on a class of 2021 team and was the only class of 22 kid there. That summer he played 54 games in 48 days, in 3 different states, none of which were the one where we live. That was all smashed in from the weekend prior to Memorial Day until about the 17th of July. In fact we left the last tournament a day early so we could get back home so he could attend band camp. He marches snare drum in the marching band. Four weeks later, at his travel team try out, after he re-made the team we stood in the parking lot of Chick-Fil-A and he told me that he wasn't going to try to play baseball in college, and that he didn't really want to play for the high school team either. I told him that was fine, it was his choice. He didn't play for me and his mom but only for himself. My assessment of the situation was that he reached the point where he was done sacrificing everything else. He had a girlfriend, he wanted to go to the lake, wanted to get a summer job. Now, a year later, I know he misses the game, but doesn't regret the decision. He would play probably if there was some lesser option that wasn't so involved. We'll see where he goes with it from here. But it was difficult to see the transformation from playing 2 games a week down at our local park where everyone knew everyone, to traveling to adjacent states to play tournaments every weekend...watching him do homework in the car. Sleeping all the time when he wasn't playing. Was it too much like a job? Do we need to try to train kids like they're pro athletes? I don't have all the answers. I just think perspective influences how you read an article like that.

Just throwing in my $.02 and it's probably not worth that much. I'm not a big guy, 5'9" 155. And, I've just started skiing in the course a lot this past season. I was in a regular CGA jacket for the first half of the season. Then, I took a fall that resulted in some cracked ribs. So I purchased a comp vest, Eagle, for the tighter fit around my dinged up ribs. After a couple of weeks I was able to resume skiing. I do find the comp vest to be more comfortable and less bulky too. But, I can't say that I ski better with it.

ESPN has a myriad of serious problems to deal with. And worrying about weather to broadcast waterskiing or not is not one of them. BTW, water skiing and Australian rules football along with other strange things were staples of ESPN programming back in the days where they had to search to find content to fill the broadcast schedule. Eventually they managed to attain broadcast rights for all of the major stick and ball sports and that stuff fell by the way side. Right now, Disney may be looking to sell off ESPN completely because the severe loss of subscribers is creating a financial drain of the whole company. Then pile on the Covid impact to the park business and movies and it's not a good picture. But don't take my word for it: ESPN reported that subscribers dropped 4.5% in Q1 2020. Previously, the loss was 4.0% in Q4 2019 and 2.5% in Q3 2019. Disney acknowledged the loss in ESPN revenue in their first quarter earnings report, citing an increase in costs and lower viewership. The decrease at ESPN was due to an increase in programming and production costs and lower advertising revenue, partially offset by higher affiliate revenue. Higher programming and production costs were driven by rate increases for NFL, College Football Playoffs and other college sports programming as well as costs for the ACC Network, which launched in August 2019. The decrease in advertising revenue was due to lower average viewership. Affiliate revenue growth was due to an increase in contractual rates, partially offset by a decrease in subscribers. The decrease in subscribers was net of the impact of the ACC Network.

This one just popped up on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/commerce/listing/613337495995027/?media_id=0&ref=share_attachment

"@yourdaguy, I agree, disagree, like and dislike all at the same time" This statement might win the internet today! Agree.

Just tell them that over the years you've come to like a clean looking exterior and therefore you removed some of the graphics including the US Open one. [technically, I think that US Open graphic was present on a few model years in the late 80s]

@robmollysilverlake - if you don't mind me asking...what didn't you like about the V-Type? I'm similar to you and this original poster. I'm just getting started in the course. I'm 5'9" 150 and I'm currently on a 66" V-Type that I went to from a 67" Radar Theory. I like the V-Type and I'm working up to 30mph at 15 off. I don't find it overly hard to ski at these speeds. BTW, I agree with the buy something at a lower price knowing that you're going to have to make another ski purchase again. Good luck!