Our purpose
I created this site for new and experienced watersports enthusiasts who want improve their current abilities and skills or learn a new sport. The information here will help you save money, make you a safer and more knowledgeable participant in your chosen activities, prevent costly mistakes and help you troubleshoot problems so that you don’t miss out on all the fun.
Update for 2022. We’ve moved into our new home on the waterfront. This gives so many more opportunities to take out the toys, have fun, and get some reviews and good photos/videos for our readers. Check out photos of some of our gear at the bottom of this page. More coming soon, too.
Jet skis or personal watercraft
My family and I have been boating for over 40 years, diving for over 30, and PWC owners for 15 years. We’ve learned a lot along the way. Personal watercraft are often quite different than sport boats.
Scuba and snorkeling share similarities but have many differences. Whether you’re new to water sports or experienced, you will find something useful here. We also have a Personal Watercraft specific YouTube channel hosted by me where we will share maintenance and riding tips.
We take our watersports safety seriously, and we’ve taught many people lessons at the lakes, rivers and oceans we’ve visited. We’ve helped many people launch and load their watercraft over the years.
We’ve seen many people making basic mistakes that could have been prevented with just a little research before setting out to ride. Along our own PWC journey, I’ve had the good fortune to have direct education from a multiple time world champion rider, his tech team and the owners of our Sea Doo shop.
They were able to put our small city on the championship tour briefly. Now that we’ve moved to Chattanooga, I’m eager to watch the Mid America WaterX Championship event held here in July.
There are many different ways to enjoy a day on the water. Jet skis are definitely near the top in the fun factor. But as their performance and popularity increase, the importance of following good riding and maintenance practices also rises.
Whether you’re a beginner looking for your first PWC or a long time owner with a specific question, we’re here to help. We will focus on safety, maintenance, saving money and on teaching you why it is important to understand as much as possible about your personal watercraft. PWC riders tend to have a negative reputation from other boaters, and the statistics for accidents skew heavily towards personal watercraft involvement. This doesn’t have to be the case.
As a radiologist with 32 years of trauma experience, I currently cover emergency rooms in 27 states via telemedicine from home. I’ve also raced (and won) several different types of cars and participated in many extreme sports. I fully understand the roles that proper training and safety equipment play in accident prevention while participating in extreme sports.
Anyone active in any of the watersports we cover here must accept that safety is always the primary focus, and that this responsibility always falls on the individual driver, rider, boarder, or diver. Most accidents are avoidable. It just requires good training and your full attention at all times.
Scuba and snorkeling
My wife and I obtained our PADI Open Water certifications in 1988. Since then, we’ve dived numerous sites in the southeast US, Hawaii, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. We’ve snorkeled in many more locales. This is because our kids had to wait until 12 to get full certification, so we took them snorkeling many times before they reached that age.
Once they got certified, we all continued our diving education and began taking specialty trips. We’re avid diving safety nuts, and put even more emphasis on having zero to minimal impact on our oceans and reefs when we dive.
Dive masters are always good about instructing groups to remain no-touch divers. This is not only for the safety of the diver, but also the protection of the reef and sea life. You’ll see us emphasize this in all of our content on scuba and snorkeling here.
As many divers know, there are always a few people on the boat who bump into everything, take “souvenirs” from the reef, exhibit unsafe behaviors or even full on panic. Have fun but remember our oceans are under great strains right now. Treat our reefs and aquatic wildlife with great respect.
Also be sure you follow all your training and remain calm. I’ve seen and tried to prevent sudden ascents from divers confused on navigation or running low on air. I’ve had to buddy breathe with strangers to keep them out of trouble.
From reef diving, swim-through shipwrecks, night dives, Manta Ray dives, to the Yucatán’s Cenotes; we’ve done a lot. But there’s more left to explore, and we hope to provide valuable info for our readers so they can join in or increase both their safety and enjoyment of the other 70% of our planet.
Boating, towing, skiing and more
Boating is a very broad topic. Most of our experience is in power boats. Over the years, we’ve learned much on safety, maintenance, towing, tubing, skiing and more with our boats. Sometimes we learn by doing, sometimes by reading, and occasionally from the school of hard knocks.
We hope you will join us as we share as much info as we can for both new and experienced boaters.
Powered boards and jet boards
Not many people have experienced riding around the lake on a powered board, or jumping surf on a board with an electric motor. It opens a whole new area of “personal watercraft” in an unconventional sense.
We’ve used fly boards a few times, and our local dealer has powered boards we hope to borrow soon. So look for those to be featured in the near future. We hope you enjoy the site, find some helpful information and be sure to share anything you find to be helpful with your friends and on social media.
Watersports Boards
The family and I are now getting involved with one of the world’s fastest growing watersports: paddle boarding. We have rented hard boards several times over the last few years while house boating on Lake Cumberland, KY. We now own inflatable boards from iRocker that we love, with Bluefin boards on tap for 2021.
Note we purchase all of our items at the standard prices. None of our recommendations are based on receipt of promotional items, unless specifically disclosed in the post. Writer and UK beachside business owner Carlo Raffa got us started with his expertise in this arena.
Now my young adult kids and nephew, all shown above, are giving wakeboards and kitesurfing a try, with help from more experienced friends.
As we gain personal experience, we will be sharing everything we learn here.
So join us for water sports fun
No matter what water sport you enjoy or want to start, we’ve got you covered. We’ll sort out the myths from the facts, the good tips from the less than helpful ones. We’ll help you keep your equipment in good working order. We’ll help you find the right water sport and the best equipment to use for it. If we don’t have personal experience, we’ll consult the experts to get it right for our readers. We hope you find something valuable here and enjoy the ride(s).
A few of the water toys now hitting the dock for summer 2022
Owner/Author Tim Conner, M.D.
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