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WATERSKI MagazineOne of the most common pieces of slalom advice is, “Make sure you pull through both wakes.” That's nice, but are you really sure how far that is? And is pulling through both wakes far enough? Let me share with you a little picture my dad once drew for me when he was having trouble getting me to pull long enough. (See diagram.)
Sometimes just pulling through both wakes is enough (like when you're using all 75 feet of rope). As the rope gets shorter, however, the width of the wakes (or distance between the wakes) decreases. This means two things:
1) You must pull longer to get to the wake.
2) You must hold direction longer after the second wake to get as wide on the boat.
In the slalom course, the distance from one buoy to another obviously does not change. However, it seems like the buoys are farther away. As you can see in the diagram, the shorter the rope gets, the more important it is to carry or maintain your strong lean even longer … through both wakes and beyond.
