Slalom Course Maintenance

We, well actually ccf member Skidaddle, has a portable slalom course kinda permanently installed on our lake. Surprisingly the life of a course is pretty short, less than a year. I went out today in the pouring rain (so the fishermen wouldn't see me and get ideas) and replaced all the balls and did a few other repairs and tried to straighten it the best I could. I guess the portable courses will always have a curve to them? I learned a few things today:

-Boy my Skiff made it much easier than if I used my CC, (algae, tools, seaweed).
-Damn I'm out of shape. I had to take breaks between pumping up 22 balls with a Mickey Mouse bike pump.
-Make sure you are up to date with your Tetanus shot as I found 500 fish hooks the hard way bc I had to pull the entire length of course up bc it was completely sunken, no balls left on surface.
-Half the balls were still attached but sunk bc of lack of air and also filled with water. Recommendations on how to avoid balls filling with water? Is this poor quality?
-Color suggestions?

We use stainless steel cable sold at Home Depot and stainless steel cable clamps to repair the course. 2 diamonds broke this year and needed new steel. Also we like the polyform balls at Skiertoskier the latex and hooks they offer are awesome. Prices are very reasonable. The balls are softer than others and seem to hold up pretty well. We ran though about 30 of them this year. Same issues on out lake. It is public and people driver over them or ski over them.

This course is fixed by a concrete bucket on one end and a concrete parking block on the other. The only time it bows is when the main lime is loose and that happens when a diamond breaks or the pvc pole slips around in the diamond.

Check out the tech tips on the above site. Some of it might help you.

Clamp

Cable

The skiertoskier website is new to me. They sell the Polyform balls very reasonably which I think might be better quality than Overtons which I bought.

The course isn't too consistent but looks pretty good. Heck, this course noob is still working on the mini course but I'm gonna die trying the full course. I did notice the skier buoys didn't line up well with the boat buoys, definite flex in the PVC arms, they were pushing 18" out of alignment. They probably sag too bringing them closer but thats fine for now, can't reach them anyways. I was gonna try to pull the course straight with the boat but not knowing what the other end was fastened with I was worried about breaking the poly ropes or crimps. The bow is minor and for us two who attempt it we'll never tell the difference.

Todd, I used an inflation needle to drain out the water in the buoys in the course I hauled up to ten for 81Nautique a couple years ago. Inflated the balls helped force the water out. Took a while but it worked. I guess over time the water displacement caused by the buoy and upward force of the water on the inflation point it will leak a little bit.

Joel probably knows more about this than anyone.

Wow.... February 28 I put all new balls in. I already need to replace half of them because they've deteriorated below the waterline. I'm sure the other half aren't far behind. I can see this is going to become expensive.