multi boat etiquette

Hello to all,
I need advice and most of you have way more experience in this type of situation. Here in OK wakeboarding is starting to grow. A couple of years ago there were only a few towers/riders now we are seeing more and more of them. I have learned a lot from this board about riding and driving (i.e. I'm no longer a power turner ) My question is this- when in an area for riding(and we all want as smooth water as possible) does one boat go at a time or multi boats following each other carefully or what?? I am starting to run into situations where there are more than 1-2 boats out at a time and we all want to ride as much as possible on a smaller lake without large protected coves so smooth water is at a premium. I would like to know how others do it so peace is kept to a maximum. Help please???

At my home lake when there are only a few boats out there we try to keep a safe distance between each other while maximizing the good water. It is a small lake so when more then 4 boats are out there the water usually sucks. What happens when there are a few boats is we kind of stage the starts so when on goes up we wait for him to hit about half lake then we start. This way they get good water and we get good water. Same goes for the other boats.

Ditto on what Snippy said. Wait for first boat to get halfway down rideable area then hit it. If it works, boat ahead knocks down waves a bit. As long as the traffic pattern on the lake is circular (not narrow - up and back), it can work OK.

In my experience , though , you're lucky if the other boats are willing to play along. We're on a small lake too, so all you can do is try....

Circular?!!?? That doesn't sound fun. The point you want to try and get is that all boats follow a path, like right down the same path, inside the wakes, whether going the same direction or opposite, while still keeping a safe distance. Riding rollers (what I call going parrallel with someones rollers and keeping them in the riders area) is a good way to get hurt. Which going in a circular path increases the liklihood of happening. If two boats are coming at each other, riders should stay behind the boat, boats pass by at a safe distance, and then go into the other boats wakes and follow the already established path. I hate lakes that require a circular direction, but then tubers are allowed to turn all over the place, especially when they are usually the worst and least aware drivers.
~AntiCircular Motion

To clarify.... Circular - as in, around the lake in a single direction. Small lakes normally have a required direction of travel, to which you must conform....... without it, CHAOS !

We have a counter clockwise direction on my lake but weekends it is CHAOS people going every which way tubing, speeding. Yesterday went out and looked like water was nice started to ride and everyone started tubing. It seemed to happen like this all day.

(Message edited by Ironcross25 on June 25, 2007)

one of the lakes i normally ride has an island and counter-clock direction. We just ride around the island, then get back on the line we were on. loop at the end the back up the line toward the island.

The best is riding the same line in a cove. And sharing the line with other towboats. you want to keep it looking like this:

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p142/denverd1/glassycove800.jpg

I'm not sure many people on my lake understand that running the same (general) line back and forth saves the water longer. I should probably stop and tell them, but usually they go somewhere and ultimately create cross wakes.