Safety Hand Signals for Water Skiers

Video Transcript

"Once you take to the water, it?s important that you have an observer, its the law that you have two people in the boat at all times. You have the driver and you have the observer facing backwards so that they can observe your hand signals. Hand signals are very important. When you are first able to get up, you are going to feel like you are going a hundred miles and hour, so the first signal we want to learn is slow down. Which is a thumb pointing down. That means slow the boat down two miles an hour. And you might have to do it several times if you are going thirty miles an hour and you feel like going twenty. The other one would be be to speed up, and that is simply the thumbs up. Two miles an hour per signal. The okay sign means that the speed is perfect. Now if you want to turn around, the signal I use means turn around. If you want to stop, I use just the cut signal. Stop. The other one would be if you've fallen in the water and there are several boats in the vicinity, you might want to hold your ski up in the air, like this, above your head as a safety precaution, so that all boaters can see you."