Story by David Bennett
Horsehead Water Ski Club, Devonport Tasmania.
The 5 skiers are about to do a dock start on discs (round flat boards that some people call saucers).
It’s a favourite pastime for us.
Our club would own 30 of them.
Cheap as chips to make …. 3ft circle of the cheapest ply you can find…a nail and a piece of string to mark out the circle and cut it out with a jigsaw. Word of advice … don’t paint the darn thing or you spend the rest of your life trying to stop them being slippery, cause they have no bindings. (Well, maybe paint the edges just so you can see them in the water, but leave the rest as bare timber which gives just the right amount of grip)
We would often tow 5 or 6 and have a “war” on the water to see who can knock the others off most often.
A “kamikaze” where both of you go down (usually created by someone throwing a rugby-type tackle onto someone else is considered unworthy of any credit because it’s too easy and requires no skill!)
Our record number of discs behind the Shortline is 17.
I notice this photo (taken the year you first started building Integras ) involves 2 people wearing dry suits, so it must have been early in the season when the water is still really cold ( having started as melted snow 20 km upstream).
Here are are a couple of photos I found which you might find interesting.
One shows 5 Gilflites (the blue spitfire was originally ours and the Integra was our brand new boat at the time ) one of the first you guys (GILFLITE) made.
The flying dock start is me at a ski show in Hobart.
