Water Toys

Hi guys, I want to use my Fish Nautique to tow my kids on some type of a tube or water toy. I have very little experience with small boats and have NO experience with tubes, skis or boards. Could you possible suggest a good tubing rig to buy and where is the best place to buy i.e. Boatus/West Marine, Boaters World, or on-line stores etc? Since the Fish does not have a tow pylon I plan to use the stern lifting rings with a harness that I seen at West Marine. Thanks for your suggestions, Jerry

Overtons.com, skilimited.com and barts.com

We tube alot with up to three at a time. As Munday said, hole in the top is good for small kids like less than 8 or 9 as they can sit down in or a bigger kid to put his stern in. These will tend to fill with water when they flip and act like an anchor. However, for eveyone else get a tube with full skin top and bottom. They are much better as you dont tend to bow your back when you hit hard waves like you do when you lay across an open hole in the donut style ones. Stay away from anything "hotdog" shaped cause when you crash, bodies stack up and people get hurt. Make sure the tow yoke is sown in real well and is of heavy material. Stay with the better brands, we like Body Glove. Keep the rope taught all the time and it really doesn't take that much speed to get a good whip. Have fun!

A good trick NOT to do: let the rope go slack, circle around the tube, and then take off in the opposite direction. If it doesn't rip the cover off the tube, the yank will hurt people.

Warning as is typical with my posts this is very long and not proofread. I also guarantee you do not want to know this much about tubing...


It all depends on how extreme you want to get. Don't anyone start flaming here I know how to slalom ski, wakeboard, wake skate, barefoot ski, and before I got old I was a decent kneeboarder and that is how I spend the majority of my time on the water but sometimes at the end of the night when the legs are shot, the hands and feet full of pins and needles and the back is aching, but the water is still glass we pull out the tube, or tubes and get serious....
    I spent a total of 10 years working at a waterfront summer camp and during that time I took literally thousands of people (mostly kids but a lot of time with the less skiliterate staff as well) tubing. Me and the other ski instructor are close friends and compete at everything so for ten years we both worked very hard at refining our stills, stealing each others techniques and trying to improve upon them. Here is the basics.
    You can't improve upon a standard tube, it needs to be at least 54 inches in diameter, but bigger isnt always better I don't recommend bigger than 58 inches. The sevylor ski biscuit was our tube of choice for many years, you can pick them up on the internet for under 50 dollars, it is a one person tube and they took the abuse of constant summer camp use as well or better than tubes we bought at 3 times the cost. Buy two or three as tubing is more fun with a friend. If you use three at a time it starts to be difficult to keep them all moving enough to get serious air but it can be done, probably best to start with two.
The bottom of the tube must be covered and should have a drain, I prefer the top left open. More on that later. It is very important that there be no seams that will cause chafing, a few models of tubes out there with rough edge treatment or st*tching that seems stratigically placed to damage the human body. As mentioned above avoid multiperson inflatables in particular the ski bob variety that run front to back. First off they are not fun, they won't move side to side and will never get off the water. Second when you fall at twenty (or 40 on a whip) you dont want to be near anything as solid as another human being it always ends in a bloody mess.
      Tubing ropes should be about the same length for two tubes if you are running three give the ones on the outside an extra foot or so. Length should be optimized to the sweet spot on the boat wake at your optimal speed. A stout pylon is best, if you dont have one mount a ring and finger stainless bow eye available from overtons in the 15 dollar range, give it a good sized backing plate. Dont use a harness and pulley arrangement it makes driving a lot harder.
      The optimal tubing position for big air and max fun is lying on the back, with feet towards the boat. Many people will argue this but they are typically the people who think it is fun to toss people off the tube trust me on this one. Now if your tube is open in the middle on top it is important to not let the riders drag thier butts, butt draggers slow down the movement from side to side and ruin everyone's good time. I think the opening on top makes it easier to stay on in a whip as it allows more freedom for leaning, but the cover on top keeps the tubes from causing trouble if they get flipped after a fall and stops butt draggers before they get started.
     My goal when taking people tubing is to provide the most fun for everyone involved, this typically means getting the tubes as fast and high as possible without putting the tuber in a position where it is not possible to stay on the tube. Falls will happen but its no fun for anyone to keep having to stop and go back and get tubers, so they are to be avoided. (When you have to take 24 kids tubing in a 50 minute time frame you get good at avoiding falls). The best tubing is done on glass, with few other boat waves in the area, it is fun to incorporate a double up every now and then but you can do plenty with your own boat wake. Boat speed should be just fast enough to give the wake at the distance of the tubes a good clean curl and no faster, the tubes will usually be moving at twice the speed of the boat. Driving too fast is just plain ol cheatin, although on glass calm water you get a little more room to play with the speed.
      To start the tubes have the riders lean back till the boat is planing, this will avoid a potentially equipment damaging submarining of the tube. Once your tubers are up experiment with moving them from side to side behind the boat by turning. As mentioned above slack is to be avoided, it is not fun for the people or the equipment. Everytime I have seen a pylon ripped from a boat it was the result of too much slack and too much speed. If I get a little too crazy and I see the rope going very slack (doesn't happen much anymore unless i am driving an unfamiliar boat) I will drop the throttle quick to avoid a disaster a tube or tubes going from 0-25 all but instantly is not fun.
     The key to avoiding slack is to straighten the boat back out after your turn starts to whip around the tuber and not to immediately turn back into the tubes. You can turn very hard at first to get them moving but experiment with how far out you want them to be before you straighten out. Only once they reach the apex of thier travel and the rope is again tight should you turn back towards them and bring them back across to the other side. Once you can do that consistantly you can experiment with straightening the boat back out immediately once you get them moving but before the tubers cross the first wake, this cleans up the wake and will give enough air on most boats to clear the back wake with one or both tubes. Once you do that consitently you can work on giving them what we refer to as "the move".
     "the move" takes a little practice and some good timing but it provides a very landable very high launch into the air. You set up the move by swinging them out and straightening out till they are at the apex and turning hard towards the tubers to get them started moving fast towards the wake. Now if you continue turning towards them as they come across they will hit the wake with a lot of tension in the rope, the tubes will be moving very fast and the wake will be washed out from the turn, not the best scenario for big air (although it can work particularily on the back side of the wake). Instead after you get them moving fast enough that they will make it accross both wakes but before they get to the first wake throw the wheel hard in the opposite direction well past straight but then right back to a nuetral helm. Hard to picture from that description but that will throw the back end of the boat towards the tubers creating a pulse in the wake that if timed right will hit the tubers perfectly. The pulse will be large and clean and the movement of the rear end of the boat towards the tubes will take a little slack off the rope and slow the speed just enough to loft the tubes well into the air. With practice you can do variations of this scenario that can give you distance (to clear the second wake) and or height.
     If it is calm out whips can also be a lot of fun once you are good enough to avoid slack.

I have never tried all this with a tower or extended pylon yet but I think with a wakeboard boat I could launch someone uncomfortably high and they could still land. I also have not tried the newest thing out there which appears to be huge flat tubes that fly like kites behind the boat when launched. If anyone has one of them let me know if they are worth the 300 bucks.

Joe, like Rob said thanks for the info, Jerry

Yeah I also left out the tube to tube wrestling matches and things of the like, and the million plus ways of dealing with those newbies who think it wise to challenge me to get them off after I just spent 20 minutes driving my ass off launching them into the air over and over and not throwing them off. Thats where the sideways whip into the double up comes in handy, on those a brave(stupid) man can do a barrel roll in the air and pretty much land 1 out of 2 after a lot of very painful practice.

I want Joe to drive TYVM

And I'd never say anything to make the boat driver mad.

Always good to go first so you can get even for abbussive boat driving.


We do have a new last year connelly 3 man,side by side center bit forward and I can give her a heck of a ride, driving the kids.On the left side I can swing it hard enuf that it starts packing air under it and lifting very contolable with either steering or throttle.
It is a bit troublesome to haul around but so are all tubes.And with 2 full figured guys like myself that are willing to get out of the seats and play monkey man like the old motorcycle sidecar racers it is one great ride.

Have fun be safe Munday