Slalom Course on a River

[chrisk]

Anyone know the tricks of the trade on how to get this done. How is it different from a lake course and whatnot?

[jet]

You don't need a course for wakeboarding?? lol

[shanerross]

We have put a portable course in the columbia river numerous times. Its no big deal you just use longer anchor ropes and start putting it in up river and work your way down. If the anchors wont hold, increase size or use two in tandem. We would have to stretch it once in a while to keep it straight though.

[sybrmike]

Be careful with the type of anchor system you use. Way back when we used to set a course in the river, the anchors would often take a hard set after a full day of the current pulling all the bouys, pvc, & rope (plus never know what's down there in a river bottom).

Make sure you've got a good retrieval method. Nastiest scuba trip I ever took was to retrieve a course anchor in the river when we couldn't pull it up. Zero visibility and no real bottom - the muck just got thicker the deeper you went. I smelled so bad they wouldn't let me back in the boat...

[Ed Obermeier]

If you have current you will probably need a current control system to keep the buoy arms relatively straight against the current. This can be as simple as setting an anchor up current from the arms on each side and running a non float type rope (3 strand nylon works well) from arm to arm to stabilize them against the current flow. Kind of a PITA with a portable but doable. In a lake or basically calm water it's not an issue, in current the current pushing against the arms sweeps them down course and out of alignment. If you're in more than 3 mph current it's probably more hassle to do than it's worth but thats your call.

If you need more info or have specific questions feel free to e-mail me at info at ez-slalom.com (obviously replace the "at" with a @).

Ed @ EZ-Slalom