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By the way, I think the reason for that harness is that it's for boats with outboards, which don't have center tie-offs. I don't know what your boat's power is, but if it's an I/O, consider what might happen if the rope wrapped itself around the prop.<br /><br />Another factor is that two points of connection spread the load on the transom out.
unless theres something wrong with your tow eye in the middle of the boat its the best way to go<br /><br />that thing could let a tube become even harder to keep behind the boat saftely in turns <br /><br />tommays
These are commonly used on O/B powered boats. The float keeps the rope up away from the prop and the pulley bridle evenly distributes the load across two points instead of one.
As Mark eluded to, never try pulling anything from only one side of the boat. You will have next to no steering control. Always pull from the center either by using the harness or the center tow hook.
RodC, hate to disagree but I tow a tube direct from the stern cleats on either side of the transom and the boat performs fine... plenty of control, no problems with listing and the thing is only a little 16ft cuddy with a 60hp fourstroke. I have a v-bridle with a pulley for waterskiing, but over here it's hard to get heavy duty bridles for tubing so we just do it straight from the cleat. What I don't disagree with is the physics of using a bridle... it will help the steering and stability by evening up the forces applied to the stern of the boat, however, in practice (and in my family's experience of more than 100 hours towing tubes in the last year) using a side cleat works just fine - if the boat is big enough. I'd hate to try it with a 10ft tinny!
I too tow tubes directly from a stern cleat, mainly because it never occured to me to do it any other way (like from a bridle). I'm not sure it's the greatest idea since if you make a sharp turn to the opposite side of where the tow rope is cleated, the rope can come very close to the engine/prop as it approaches an angle almost parallel with the transom. I always have spotter keep an eye out for stuff like this, but it's still probably not the greatest idea.
Oh well, when I started skiing we did not know what a bridle was and managed. Of course we were also trying to barefoot at 35 mph which was EXTREMELY fast on the water. Times do change, thank goodness.
<br /> Ski Tow Hitch <br /><br />I've got something like it on my 18' Starcraft (aluminum) w/ a 115HP Merc O/B. I once tried to tie-off to a corner cleat, and had a heck of a time controlling the boat.
I've used teh cleats before and they worked fine. Up until I had to tow someone that tipped the scale at 230 lbs. Man talk about a rough deal. The cleats work fine for kids and lighter folks, but once you get heavier folks or doing alot of turning it is better to get the bridle. Course this is only if you have an outboard. Most I/O have the center tow hook.
