Walk on water

Taking skis to the other form of H2O

By Sam Pfeifle

The history of snow skiing has always made perfect sense to me. Way back in the day, a bunch of guys in Scandinavia were stuck in their houses, buried under 10 feet of snow. They needed to go get some stuff. Maybe they had a big dog. Their snow shoes were always flopping around and getting stuck in weird positions. So, some genius strapped some wood to his feet, waxed the boards up, and all of a sudden he was the most ambulatory guy in the village. You know, all that about necessity being a mother.

But water skiing, that’s a different story. If you’re stuck under 10 feet of water, you’ve got more problems than how to get to the corner store. So, who was the genius who glanced over at his wooden boat (attached to a giant diesel engine), and said, “Hey, think that thing could tow me around the lake?”

Apparently it was some guy named Ralph Samuelson, a Minnesotan, which figures. They got more lakes than brain cells up there (Kidding! Jeez, you Midwesterners are touchy). Anyway, it was back in 1922, and it seems to have coincided with all the other flapper eccentricities that were taking hold at the time: commercial radio, Reader’s Digest, talking movies, Mein Kampf, women voting, that sort of thing. He was only 18.

Within a few years, water skiing became quite the hot exhibition sport, but it probably had nothing to do with all those women in bathing suits sitting on each other’s shoulders. Rather, it was fun for the whole family. I mean, who doesn’t have a big boat and a giant body of water to cruise around on?

Well, the Pfeifle family does. (In fact, now that I’m working for the Phoenix, we’ve got, like, seven boats!) Once a summer or so, Pops would throw Sis and I in the back of the boat, strap a bright orange floatie to our backs, and get us out there on wobbly legs over fiberglass skis. Sis would always get up right away, seeing as she was actually fairly athletic and weighed about 50 pounds. The throttle went down, and, pop, she was up. Problem was, she weighed so little we couldn’t really tell when she fell down, and sometimes we’d leave her a quarter mile behind waving furiously.

For my part, I’d do loads of grumbling about how I’d never get up, then, after much struggling and consternation, manage to get up — at which point I would always have to extract a huge wedgie. I probably wasn’t doing something right, but they’d never tell me if I was, seeing as how I was a stubborn little bastard who wouldn’t have listened anyway.

Pops, having grown up in Maine (and not in crappy Massachusetts) was actually good at water skiing (still is), and we would all marvel at the big rooster tails he’d kick up with his one ski, arcing in and out of the boat’s wake.

There are some other folks in Maine who are pretty good at it, too. Good enough to make it a competitive sport, actually. USA Water Ski, a member of the International Water Ski Federation, currently sanctions more than 800 events around the country each year. And, no, the events do not involve pyramid-building contests or a “Best Use of an Elvis Impersonator” prize.

Many events — those that haven’t converted to using a wakeboard, or kneeboard, or hydrofoil, or “swivel ski,” and have slightly different rules — have contestants compete in three categories: slalom, tricks, and jumping. In slalom, a series of eight buoys are staggered to make a course, and the skiers have to navigate them at increasing speeds, and then with diminishing rope lengths. The best skiers don’t miss a buoy until the rope is shorter than the distance from the boat to the marker, and they have to lay themselves out to reach their ski around. Most buoys navigated wins.

Jumping’s pretty straightforward. The ramp is six feet high (five feet for the ladies), and the skier launches off the ramp. Longest wins. The best guys go more than 220 feet.

Then there are tricks. Why you’d want to get towed around by your foot is beyond me, but doing numerous turns by the big toe is a popular one, and other tricks include flips off the wake, spins, and whatnot. (The whatnots are the hardest.)

Travelers used to taking Route 111/202 through Sanford should be familiar with what these courses look like (or have been wondering about lobster traps on the Mousam River). This particular course, visible from the bridge in the middle of town, has been set up and maintained by the Square Pond Water Ski Club, which is headed up by one Raymond Beaunoin. (Along with the Turtle Creek Water Ski Association, it’s one of just two clubs in Maine, and Janet Lambert, who runs Turtle Creek, says that her club is more of just a local affair, so Raymond seems like the guy to contact if you’re interested in this sort of thing).

I can’t say the competition interests me. As far as I can tell, water skiing employs muscles never utilized in any other activity, and every time I try it nowadays I wind up with wrenched shoulders, sprained hammies, and screaming quads.

But, on a still summer morning, with lake water like glass and steam rising high enough to obscure the far shore, I can certainly understand the appeal of a good once- around.

Sam Pfeifle can be reached at spfeifle@phx.com. “Game On” tackles all manner of marginal sports and runs once a month.