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Let’s face it, we were all Wallys at one point, I hate to think of how naive I was when I started boating. So, I was out by the lake doing some work the other day and noticed that whenever I heard a boat going by on the lake and I looked up I could identify if it was a Wally or not in just a glance, and sometimes I could tell just by the sounds of them going by. I started thinking about the things I was using to make the Wally call, and here is my quick top 20 list off the top of my head in no special order and no harm meant if you do these things or disagree, its just my opinion.
1. Bumpers hanging off the side of the boat while underway.
2. Swim ladder down while underway (on outboards and I/Os)
3. Driver standing up while driving. This is almost a rule with I/Os, for some reason almost every driver of an I/O stands when driving.
4. Loud poor sounding music, usually poor choice of music as well. Note, if you are going to play Dixie Chicks or Whitney Houston please don’t turn the crappy sounding stereo up so loud!
5. A lot of yelling and yee has from the boat when the rider attempts some sort of "trick"
6. Power turns
7. Boat weighted very wrong. For example wakeboarding with most of the ballast in back so the nose is up high, causing the driver to have to stand up. Or, attempting to surf with not enough side weight.
8. Driver gunning the throttle when trying to get riders up, I watch this happen all day, then they can’t get up so the driver does a power turn to get back to them.
9. Speed way to fast/slow for surfing/wakeboarding
10. Driver not following obvious laws such as no wake inside buoys, or not passing other boats on right.
11. Driver uses a hard reverse every time they pick up a rider. I do this a bit if I accidentally overshoot, but I watch some always pull in hot, then use reverse really hard to slow down.
12. Surfing in the center of the lake throwing large consistent swells towards both shores.
13. Wakeboarding on a diagonal across lake, or general inconsistent direction so other riders cannot avoid their wake.
14. Passengers outside the seating area while underway/wakeboarding/surfing. I watch the cops write tickets for this all the time, usually its people lying on the sun deck while someone is surfing, the other day i saw i guy actually standing on the swim platform while someone was surfing.
15. Narrow stance binding mount on wakeboard, or directional stance, or unknown random stance that was presumably setup when they ordered the shrink wrapped board/bindings/rope/video from West Marine or Overtons.
16. Wakeboarding with over/under ski grip
17. Wakeboarding anyway when conditions are poor/unridable
18. Doing a wakeboard trick every time you pass another boat, presumably hoping to impress them. Air chair guys do this on our lake, not sure why.
19. Unorganized at boat ramp. There are probably 50 more boat ramp ones, but unorganized sums it up.
20. Riding with no vest or non-CGA vests for no reason. Non-CGA just gives the cops a reason to pull you over, I have nothing against them.
21. For lakes that require an orange rider down flag, mounting it permanently up. This will also draw in the cops.
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