Wish i had a way to tow!.
Jetski rentals are super pricey here plus towing is prohibido unless you own the jetski...duh.
I am cooking up a launch platform to see if i can get some practice that way.Will post if i get decent results.
After watching this video I decided to add the arm swing to my pumping during winging downwind and unlocked my technique.
Dock starts are tricky because they also require you to land on the board in the perfect spot, with sufficient speed /forward momentum. What is significantly easier is to do some tow from a pontoon. 3-5m of rope, 10-15m of runable pontoon, and a ratio of 2 towers per towee, ( or a single adult towing a teenager ). Advantage is that you can ensure the right foot position on the board while keeping some of your weight off the board due to holding onto the pontoon till the pull comes in, and the runner(s) will give you enough initial speed to achieve a good liftoff before letting go of the rope and getting into the pumping action. That makes it a carbon-neutral fun social activity with a couple of friends.
Agreed. Actual dock starts mystify me ... I cannot get my head around running with the board and jumping onto it. Using a static board holder removes that variable and makes it a lot more doable. I tried briefly this summer on a lake trip and I am confident that with a little more time and effort, it would have worked.bragnouff wrote: ↑Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:43 pmDock starts are tricky because they also require you to land on the board in the perfect spot, with sufficient speed /forward momentum. What is significantly easier is to do some tow from a pontoon. 3-5m of rope, 10-15m of runable pontoon, and a ratio of 2 towers per towee, ( or a single adult towing a teenager ). Advantage is that you can ensure the right foot position on the board while keeping some of your weight off the board due to holding onto the pontoon till the pull comes in, and the runner(s) will give you enough initial speed to achieve a good liftoff before letting go of the rope and getting into the pumping action. That makes it a carbon-neutral fun social activity with a couple of friends.
We did try the bungee thing, although maybe didn't use exactly the right one and the right setup, and found that it was much easier to find a couple of friends than to refine the perfect bungee setup. I used 3x10m of 8mm bungee cord, braided together and using a Wichard QR to release the tensioner. That feels quite intimidating to tension the whole thing, and the initial pull once the bungee was released was very sharp, brutal but also quite short lived, which seems quite different from what's described in that WakeThief video. There's room for improvement, but this needs a few experiments, maybe different locations, and because we don't own that public pontoon, we can't really attach a winch to it. Also pulling alongside the pontoon instead of away from it brings plenty of fear factor. In the end, human powered tow-in was the easy successful option. That was just before winter, and kept it at that. But now with the full season ahead, we should be able to refine that further and come up with something usable and cheap.juandesooka wrote: ↑Wed Oct 20, 2021 1:53 am
Agreed. Actual dock starts mystify me ... I cannot get my head around running with the board and jumping onto it. Using a static board holder removes that variable and makes it a lot more doable. I tried briefly this summer on a lake trip and I am confident that with a little more time and effort, it would have worked.
Your tow option sounds good, but the logistics would make it impossible in my world. The bungee option allows for same effect but solo. Here's the plans ... we priced it out around $200 in materials, though never got around to pursuing it.
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