F CONTESTS
April 25th, 2009 adminwell i fell on my first trick and didnt do a damn thing except slide the rails the way i wanted to in the qualification round of wakegames yesterday. its come to my attention several times over the past 4 to 5 years that i need to shorten my rope and slow the boat down 3 to 4 mph for contests. the only problem that i have with that is………… well, everything. first off, im stubborn. second, going from a long rope to a short rope sucks because you basically have to re-learn your timing on just about every trick. third, i dont want to conform to a contest setting…….. i want the contest to conform to me. but i guess that wont ever happen so for now it looks like if i want to try and do this contest thing i need to shorten my rope and go slower. this season i have had planned to see how well i can do in contests but stop number one for me which was this weekend has taught me a valuable lesson, i must shorten my rope and go slower.
for example, most everyone was riding a 80ft to 83ft rope and going about 25 mph. i was riding a 90ft rope and going 27.5 mph. needless to say if a boat hits start up rollers going that fast its gonna porpoise and thats exactly what happened. not only that but hitting those obstacles going that fast doesnt work so well. i had to have travis (the pro tour boat driver and boarding school co-owner) slow down about a mile an hour for me to hit the fun box and roof top rail so that i would not be launched all the way to the end of the lake.
anyway, i guess ill have to try and conform a little bit in order to do somewhat decent at these tour stops. i at least dont want to embarrass myself and i feel thats exactly what i did yesterday. the biggest frustration for me was the fact that i had been riding behind a 230 nautique for the 2 weeks leading up to wakegames and had a pretty solid run down. oh well. at least i learned.