Make the best of towed tubing

[Comment Below]

By Ryan Rhodes

Stressed out enough about finals yet? Just get through a few more caffeine-induced sleepless nights, and summer will be here ripe with perfect stress relieving activities. Ever been tubing? And I’m not talking the lazy tubing where all you do is sit, drink and gradually develop skin cancer. I mean the really fun kind; the kind where you hold on for dear life while being towed behind a speedboat and when the jerk driving finally does manage to throw you out of your inflatable fortress, you skip across the water like a flat rock thrown by Randy Johnson. And … it’s … awesome.

So what if you know a guy with a boat or something like that and you’d like to try this fun past time, but you’ve never done it before and you’re not entirely sure how. Well, if you’re the one on the tube, your job is easy; hold on for dear life. Get a gator grip on the plastic handle, wear a life jacket and try to avoid bull sharks, alligators and disgruntled mermaids. That’s really all the advice you need. The guy driving the boat, however, needs to know what he’s doing.

First things first, the guy driving the boat should not drink – at all. Really, the guy on the tube shouldn’t drink either, but it’s not as big a deal for him. Obviously, you need to get a tube, but that’s a no-brainer. You also need a special tow harness for the boat to which to tether the tube. If you just tied a rope to the back of the boat, you run the risk of getting it tangled in the propeller. I’ve had that happen to me before. The boat was disabled, and we had to take it out of the water to fix it. Do you know how hard it is to push a boat up a landing?

You can find any of these products at an Academy. Once you have everything you need, you need to pick a deep patch of water to tube in. Shallow water equals ground, stumps and rocks which equals guy on tube hitting them which equals ouch. So, by the transitive property, shallow water equals ouch. I hope you enjoyed this issues math joke.

The tuber should get in the tube while the boat is still idle. There should always be at least one other person in the boat besides the driver to keep an eye on the tuber. Once the tuber is sitting and settled, gradually ease the throttle on the boat so as to accelerate slowly. Once you’re at a comfortable speed, the real fun can begin.

Start by making sharp, slow turns. You may not go very fast, but the tube will fly. After a few of those, start pulling the tube through your own wake. It’ll give him/her a nice bumpy ride. You can also combine this technique with a slow turn. That’s one of the best ways to throw the rider off the tube. If you’re an experienced boat driver and you feel comfortable doing so, you can try carefully circling the boat to make a sort of whirlpool out of the boats wake. This basically puts the rider in a constant swing with waves coming at him/her from all directions.

Of course, everyone on the boat will want to throw the rider off the tube. If and when this does happen, immediately ease the throttle down and go back and get him/her, but make sure the tow rope stays taut. If the rider is crazy enough to try again, let him/her get back on the tube. If it’s someone else’s turn, make him/her swim out to the tube and get the other rider back in the boat.

That should be enough to get you started if you want to go tubing after finals. Just remember, when doing this or any other outdoor activity, please be safe. Use your common sense and good judgment, and, for the love of God, Buddha, Allah, Shiva and Jewish God don’t do anything stupid. I know that God, Allah and Jewish God are all the same thing, but I had to cover all the bases so no one would leave angry comments on the Web site.

Originally Published: Issue 607 - May 6, 2008

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