Doing the Boot-Scoot
Shuffle, At 40 Knots
By Paul Campbell
The problem with many
inventions is that while they sound good in theory, in actual use they can be
somewhat less than "user friendly."
There have been a few patents in recent memory that involved an adjustable
water ski fin. Sounds great, but I'm guessing the inventor never actually tried
to turn around, bend down, and adjust the fin on a curve in the middle of a
race! Of course if they did, then divers are still trying to recover the body
fragments from the bottom of Lake Roadrash.
Eventually somebody was bound to take a lesson from automotive design: If both
hands are busy, put the controls where you can adjust them with your feet.
If At First You Don't
Succeed, Try Something Different
Previous inventors have come up with methods for adjusting
the height of a water ski's stabilizer fin. Unfortunately there was really no
way to actually use the idea. When
you're skimming across the water like a rocket sled your hands are usually
pretty busy. Letting to go reach for a lever that you can't see is, well,
suicidal! Just the thought of it conjures up all to familiar mental pictures of
Evel Knievel's limp body
bouncing across the pavement. So to avoid the epitaph "Here Lies An
Idiot," inventor Timothy Michael Lopes of Porterville, CA came up with a
way to make the adjustments with the least amount of body movement.
 As
we can see in the drawing at the left, the ski fin is attached to the upper
side of the ski, just under the back of the rear boot. Ostensibly by applying
more or less pressure under the user's heel, the fin depth is adjusted
accordingly. But the patent is written very cryptically, and unless you're
paying attention you can miss the real gem in this one!
Take a closer look at the first drawing. What's wrong with
this picture? The member that the ski fin is attached to doesn't fit under the
back of the rear boot, it attaches to the back of the rear boot! I was
wondering why a seemingly revolutionary water ski patent had gone unnoticed and
was not yet assigned to any manufacturer or marketer. This may or may not be
the reason, but it sure looks like a red flag to me. Not that there is anything
intrinsically wrong with the device, but there is a rub.
Here's the catch, " . . . it is an important feature of
the present invention that the ski complies with all of the rules and
regulations of the World Water Ski Federation and the American Water Ski
Association, the governing bodies which promulgate and enforce the rules
pertaining to water ski slalom racing. One
such rule is that the ski may have no moving parts, and the unique
construction previously described, meets that criteria in every respect."
Sure, if the moving parts are attached to the skier, and not the ski!
To my knowledge neither of the governing organizations have
any regulation saying you can't have something attached to your apparel that
hangs in the water. Of course up until now who would have even considered this?
I suppose if you were using two skis instead of slalom racing you could also
use a really BIG fin attached to your back and just lean when you need to
steer.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I
Present To You "The Human Wishbone."
 The
two little gizmos numbered 42 are a pair of opposing horizontal stabilizers.
They're deliberately angled to more or less pull the fin down when moving. They
are essentially two short lengths of angle iron. Okay Paul, so what?
Two days before I wrote this column I saw a local news
article on TV where I live in Florida about a manatee that had gotten some
heavy test monofilament line wrapped around its flipper and essentially
amputated its own appendage. In case you don't happen to live near the coast,
we tend to use some pretty stout line in salt water, and quite a lot of it at
that. Are you starting to form a mental picture here? You're skimming across
the Atlantic on a beautiful calm sunny day somewhere off Nantucket Island, when
suddenly that little piece of angle iron grabs hold of a piece of 180 pound
test monofilament that somebody cut loose when they got snagged on the wreck of
the Andrea Doria. Enter the "Human
Wishbone."
At this point any one of a number of possible scenarios
present themselves to mind, all of which are equally unpleasant. The Human
Wishbone certainly tops the list of nasty possibilities. One leg follows the
boat, while the other leg remains hooked to Andrea. If you weren't double
jointed before, then you are probably in a certain amount of discomfort now.
Hopefully you have already discussed family planning with your spouse!
Another avenue of demise is that the line is slack and
stretches with you for a while before you realize it and eventually let go of
the towline. Of course during that period of blissful ignorance the line has
built up some amount of elastic tension, and upon releasing the towline you are
forthwith dragged under by the polymer equivalent of Captain Nemo's giant squid.
So here's the solution: Sharpen the front edges of the
horizontal stabilizers to a knife-edge. Then it's nothing but clear sailing, or
skiing as the case may be. Of course if you happen to run over a manatee with
your stiletto stabilizers, you're still in some deep stuff with the local
department of wildlife. I think they draw and quarter people for molesting
manatees in Florida.
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