Kyle Cummings skied a great race and he has a great future ahead of him. Like I mentioned, the conditions were brutal and it really put some great open skiers in the brink.

DMan

You can see my boat pictured above by Steamin Rice and notice the chop in the water and this picture was taken at the start inside the breakwater protected from the swells in the ocean. We reduced our speed from 75 to 45 within a quarter mile and had to back off more as the race wore on.

DMan

Its a good thing boat #20 was recently featured in a popular boating magazine as it didn't make the printed program. I never would have known who it belonged to...

Once we programmed Dman's GPS for him we too wre off, a third place finish to the DMAN but a well deserved first for Phil, Ron Ken and Gordon. It was knarly water!!!!

Team Turbosonic!

Cool stuff guys!

Always thought that would be fun to do. Is that dude skiing slalom??

The skier uses a special built ski (like a Maja), very long, heavy, laced in both feet. He skies between 200 and 275 feet behind the boat, with his bridle behind his back held by one hand. The other hand can be used for anything else he wants. His neck is braced, helmet laced to this shoulder pads, arms straped to his sides and he/she wears a special wet suit. For circle racing the standard boat is a 21' turbo or supercharged boat with up to 1600 hp, two or three speed auto, #6 dry sump or V-drive and one or two sets of K-planes, mounted in various ways. For the famous Catalina Ski Race (62 miles of open ocean) they use 39' offshore boats, with unlimited horsepower. Navigation plays a part in this race. The average time for open men and women is approximately 1 hour, the record is 52 minutes. Water ski racing is found on the west coast, Australia, Europe and So Africa.
FYI, I started in a few Catalina Races with 140 to 150 boats all drag racing toward the opening in the breakwater at once. Thats an incredible thing to do, see and hear...