To water-ski, a verb not used by many, as it isn’t a very popular sport. In fact, snow-skiing, which is a more ‘versatile’ or common sport is acceptably more widespread and well known. Personally, I have been associated with this sport for more than a decade. When I was little, my dad placed me on two wooden parallel skis. That was the first time I tried this ‘solo’ sport. My father, who had been practicing this prestigious sport from his teenage years, was very eager to show me how it’s done. The traditional way of waterskiing, completed by two, evenly laid out skis are usually placed in with a special way ensuring that both feet are comfortable and secure.
When talking about mono-skiing, which refers to a single ski where the two seperate feet are placed, one behind the other, allows for a more rigorous, and different way of approaching a slalom course. A slalom course refers to a type of ‘parkour’ for water skiers on water. There is a total of six buoys that have to be ‘completed’ meaning that the speed and the length of the rope have an impact on the ability to pass and turn around the buoys.
As the speed increases or the rope shortens, the base lean angle/leverage for each pass increases. A pass and lean angle simply mean that in order to turn your body around the buoy, the speed and length of a rope have an impact. I try to have skiers identify what lean angle allows them to fully relax and be as early as they want to be, scoring them out of 10. As they shorten or speed up, they have to increase the lean angle by 1 in order to have the same amount of space. In a nutshell, space is created by a higher edge angle of the ski. The more the ski is rolled over the more it will go across the lake. The flatter the ski is the more the boat is able to pull you down course. There are 2 factors that go into how much edge angle is necessary at each line length: 1. the speed of the boat 2. the rope length.
In contrary, there are many other competitive and easy going ways to enjoy the broad water-ski category. This includes, the traditional way which I explained earlier, as well as wakeboarding, which is very similar to snowboarding for those who are familiar with the winter variants. One that is easy to enjoy as a child would be boogie boarding or “knee boarding”, as they call it in Australia. This is a small foam surfboard that is pulled by a boat.
Lastly, the sport can virtually be enjoyed by anyone, however, it isn’t easy to find a spot in Singapore. The place I used to go to in Bedok is generally preferred by several Singaporean customers over Western customers, for some odd reason. This is what makes it difficult for my family to enjoy the sport on a Sunday afternoon.
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