I learnt to ski and board behind a 4mtr rib with a 40 mariner on it, it took a while to get out of the water but it was a cheap day out and i weigh 16 stone!!!, also once you've learnt to ski behind a smaller powered boat it'll be a walk in the park behind anything more powerful.
I've boarded behind 25hp but I should think a fat man on ski's would probably need 40hp, and on 1 ski at least 60 and 90+ to get you deep water starting on 1 ski.
H
Define fat?
I weigh in at around 17 1/2 st.
My 150 Opti just about gets me up on a mono IF my technique is good, otherwise I can win the tug of war.
When I was around 15 st I could get up behind a 50hp, so the extra weight seems to make a huge difference to required grunt ...
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"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti
You really need to specifiy what type of skiing / experience and weight. I only have experience of sports boats and tournament ski boats but you *can* do a depp water mono ski start behind the typical 135hp 16ft ski boat but if you are 17st and a bit lax on the old technique then it can be a long time popping out the water and you need to get your crew as far forward to get on the plane and max pull quicker. A 13st guy fit and good technique can pop up with half the effort behind the same boat.
You can ski on a pair or a board from 60hp up no problems though especially if you use a pair of the new style wide tipped combi skis (also available in mono now too).
I've gone from a 260hp V8 tournament boat which would pull several lardy poor style mono's up at the same time (assuming their arms didn't part from their body first!) back to a 18ft bowrider and it's far more of a struggle on a mono but it shows how lazy I've let my technique become behind the tournament boat as I used to be able to get up behind far less !
It's all very well trying to "get your knees up on your chest when starting" but I haven't seen my knees for year s :-)
