It was a really good format that they run there.
Skiing split up into lots of different classes, some could and should have been combined.
As an example they had a race with a maximum speed of 60mph with a maximum lap time, this was very entertaining to watch 1000+hp boats five to six across on the last straight all edging forward to try and cross the line first.
Only to find out after the race that all of the front five were de-cued for going to fast and the boat / skier in sixth position actually won but with other boats only fractions away
very good fun.
We should try something like this in the UK at Cardif for example.
Ok for my skiing now, firstly I did F2 behind a cyclone with a 300x nice boat but not very quick, the water was quite flat so flat out all the way around.
As these are short sprint races you need a really quick boat.
Top speed was 70mph so did not do that great and finished 5th.
Next up I did F1 in my age group 33-42 mens
Ok what a bloody shock that was, we started off in fifth place as I wanted to get a feel for the boat.
After about a lap and a half we took the pace up to 95MPH
at this point I had a feeling of extreme excitement mixed with fear of death, WOW what a buzz.
Ok so we took it up a notch and manged to get into third position, we crossed the line in third and the boat slowed down only to find out the there was a further lap.....
so the boat we had just passed for third passed us again on the inside.
We could not catch them again and finished in forth about a ski line down from third.
I did not care to much where we had finished the buzz was just amazing.
The second race that I did the boat played up, we actually had faster lap times but the speed was not so much of a shock so I was wanting to go quicker, at one stage after nodding my head (calling up signal) several times and no increase in speed I took my front hand off and gave a big up signal to the observer at the same time the engine all 1100hp decided to stop missing and come back to full power
it very nearly pulled me straight over the front of the ski.
I just manged to get my front hand back to the handle in time.
We finished fourth in the second race.
Here are a couple of photos......more to follow.