Driving question
 

I have a quick driving and boat question
We have a 07 Malibu 23 LSV and run it mostly on the dark side.

The question is when picking up a fallen rider. I have typically driven the boat in a similar manor surfing as I would wakeboarding, back off the gas let the 3 waves pass turn and idle back to pick up the rider. My question is - Is it ok to hit reverse as soon as the rider falls? I did this last weekend when it was busy and had boat close by. It seamed to work well (did not need to wait for the wave to pass) but is doing this method going to be hard on the transmission and shorten its life? I do change all fluids every 50 hrs and use synthetic oil in the trans.

No need to hit reverse, the wave will pass you by pretty quik. I don't ever try to throttle in reverse unless its at idling speed. Don't know if it would hurt the tranny or not. But I would like to know that also.

I just looked at the vid wakemongrel posted of his kid and it looks like at the end of her run he backs up? Or was that an edit in the vid?

When we had a 23LVS we would bring boat to neutral, drop into reverse give it a slight pump or two and turn to get the rider, with the reverse pump you could ususally stop and return quicker to the rider.