Re: tubing how fast is to fast?
Years ago I had a buddy that used to like to just jump out the boat with a rope in hand and barefoot water ski, at ANY speed. I have no idea how he did it. More than once he jumped out of my 175hp bass boat at wide open throttle with a rope in hand. He'd bounce a few times then be up and skiing. That boat topped out over 50mph, probably a lot more than that on a good day.
I had another guy in more recent years that wanted to try skiing behind my boat. He brought a board and a rope, one day and bought the gas, so I figured why not, if nothing else it would be good for entertainment watching him hit the water. I, nor him had any idea of what was or should have been the proper or safe towing speed. Not wanting to be dropping a skier in high traffic areas of the river we stuck to a few flats areas off of one bend in the river, the water was between 4 and 10' deep there. He kept complaining that I wasn't pulling him up on plane fast enough, after a few dozen tries he still hadn't successfully ridden more than 10' or so at a time.
He finally told me to just 'Punch it' when he waved me on. (keep in mind my boat back then had a 225hp Johnson on an 18' bass boat).
When I did, he popped up and on plane like a cork out of wine bottle, then he lost it, in shallow water, and didn't let go. He was in waste deep water. When I circled back to get him he was still choking up black mud. He had dove headfirst into the muddy bottom. He said he didn't want to waste another try or have the rope yanked out of his hands so he put his arms through the handle loop and held onto the rope. His open, probably screaming mouth scooped up mud like a shovel. That was his last try and the last time he ever asked me to pull him on the water. To the best of my knowledge, it was the last time period he tried anything like that.
We did have a spotter in the boat, his wife at the time, when he fell, all she did was laugh and finally made the comment that he hadn't surfaced yet. While no doubt he could have been seriously injured, the resulting fight between the two was just as entertaining. I've not seen either one of them in years.
When we were real young, there were none of these fancy tubes, we used either plastic barrels, tractor tubes, or anything that would float.
