WIRiverRat

Hucklefin, We put the buoys in as soon as the ice melts. When the river is low we can pull everything to the surface and just clip on balls. No need to get wet. Once the spring floods start we would have to dive to connect everything. However once the balls are in we usually can't help it and start skiing. I think the water was 37F for the first run this year.

Course is right next to the airport. We put it in about 5 years ago. We let the UWL kids ski it and help them out if they want. If he skis with them he will certainly be skiing it.

I am a bit south but we have a permanent course down in Lacrosse as well. Nothing that I know of up in your area.

I do not have experience with POR15. We paint all our dock poles with acrolon which are 12in diameter steel poles that are 40ft long. There is constant wave action with the dock roller going on them and I have not had to repaint anything in 6 years. For my business we have coated equipment going in to harsh environments like salt water and waste water treatment facilities and it has held up well. Like anything you paint it is all about the prep work.

Sherwin Williams Acrolon will last forever. It is a 2 part epoxy paint. You have to use the primer made for it first. It is a bit on the pricey side but it is used in nasty environments all the time and holds up great.

This was 15 years ago but I took a jump crash and injured my elbow pretty bad. The secondary insurance from USA Waterski was easy to deal with and paid out every penny my own insurance would not cover. It probably ended up close to $5k with all the rehab. I was happy. I'm sure a lot could have changed in that time but that was my experience.

I have had perfect pass stargazer in my boat for the past 12 years. It has always worked flawlessly. I just took the boat out of storage and it locked in a GPS signal right away, got up to speed an it engaged like it should. I drove the first pass through the course and it was locked on a speed but never started beeping and timing in once we hit the entrance gates. I remapped the course and ran it again and the same thing happened. I turned it off and back on and still the same. It is locked on the course and getting accurate coordinates. Any ideas on what to try to get it recognizing the course again?

I may know of one.... My ski partner has a 50th anniversary with probably about 300 hours on it. He has an order in for a new one, however not sure when that will come in. He will be selling his when the new boat comes in. Message me if you want some more info.

My son wanted a new slalom ski and vest from Santa this Christmas so I placed an order for a new radar TRA and vest with the local dealer back in September. I get that supply chains are all messed up and do not expect it in time for Christmas anymore. Just wondering if anyone has insight on how backed up Radar is in getting orders fulfilled right now and delivered to the dealers (in many cases I assume the product is built and just sitting waiting to be delivered).

I know the dealer very well. He is pretty tired of the sale of this falling through. The process is quite a bit like buying a car. You go in to the dealership you find your car, agree on price and then go to the financing guy (assuming you didn't get pre approved from your own bank). They go a run a credit check and find out you can't qualify for this boat. He said a lot of people are trying to use their stimulus cash to buy a boat but that only goes so far. As soon as he puts it back up for sale he usually has a call on it within a day. Boat sales are crazy right now. I think they have a total of about 3 boats on their lots right now.

That is my buddy's boat. He just traded it in for a new 2021 prostar. It has around 500hours. It says sale pending because the dealer has "sold" it 8 times now with every buyer unable to secure financing for it. If you walk in with cash its yours.

Do you know which cylinder is misfiring? You can wear a thick rubber glove and pull each wire off the cap one at a time to figure out which cylinder is having the issue. Once you have identified the bad one you can then go about replacing the wire, spark plug, check compression etc. I just had the same problem this spring at start up. Ended up being a loose connection on the injector to cylinder 1. Tightened it up and everything runs great, but I was able to use this technique and find which cylinder, then verify spark, compression and finally find out it wasn't getting gas.

Go buy a 20lb danforth anchor with some chain. Dive down and dig it in out away from your dock and put about 50ft of rope off it. Tie the back of the boat to the tree. If set properly that anchor will hold that boat no problem.

Back in college Paul let us host two tournaments a year at Tivoli. His only requirement for that was we had to bring him a six pack of beer (nothing domestic) and we had to drink it with him when we were done skiing, he never charged us a dime for all that skiing. Great guy with a ton of great stories.

I used a large magnet to find a chain that went down to our anchor whenever a buoy popped off. I think it was a 250lbs pulling magnet, fairly large. Rust on a galvanized chain quickly stopped that idea from working. After about a year the magnet would hardly hold on to anything. Passing waves would separate it. I now just have a piece of SS cable running to every anchor. I catch that with a grapple hook and snap on the buoy. Much easier.