XWaterskis did not become the world leader in cross-waterskiing overnight. What we have achieved is the direct result of close to 20 years of hard work. This section of our website discusses our history, milestones, and strategic decisions.
Kim envisioned cross-waterskis in the summer of 2004 after Andy Houston (now our Principle Idea Builder) invited him to go see the Milk Carton Derby at Green Lake, Seattle.
“I had gone to see the Seattle Seafair Milk Carton Derby at Green Lake after hearing about it from my friend, Andy Houston. Contestants build boats with floatation from sealed, empty milk cartons. There is tremendous creativity and variety in the boats. Some boats support just one or two people and others are larger with teams of 6 or 7 paddlers. I got to thinking what the smallest possible boat might be. After shrinking my boat in my mind, I was left with just a couple of skis. I was determined to join the next year’s derby. I didn’t ever enter the Milk Carton Derby, but I did build two milk carton pairs of skis.” — Xyloph Kim
That December, Kim assembled a crack design/build team that included Andy, Ted, Terry, Hanah, and Nancy. The following video clip shows the momentous event as they successfully launch the first cross waterskis, V1.0. These skis proceeded the invention of the FootPaddle®. If you watch closely during construction and launch, you can see the primitive flaps on the bottom of the skis.
The main improvement in V1.1 was the incorporation of the first FootPaddle® and the replacement the cross country skis with a 9 foot fir 1x4s. The cross country ski bindings were moved over, along with the milk cartons. V1.1 failed on its maiden voyage. A small knot near the center of one of the 1x4s (I probably should have paid for clear) caused the ski to snap in half. V1.2 rectified this weakness by adding a 9 foot 1×2 keel under the 1x4s. The V1 FootPaddle® was just an 8 foot 1×2 with blades on each side, rather than the two-piece FootPaddles® used on today’s modern cross-waterskis.
The milk cartons were replaced by styrofoam in V2, and the cross country ski boots were replaced with Andy’s size 13 tennis shoes. Here’s an infomercial of V2.0 from the summer of 2009.
We performed a significant amount of testing in 2009 thanks to our Test Engineers, Margaret, Andrea, Nancy Rose, Andy, and Nancy, our Water Safety Supervisor, Erik B, and our dock side support staff, Judy, Billy, and Michael.
The following movie documents some of these efforts and the valuable feedback shared by the test engineers. For example, Nancy advocated strongly against further use of Andy’s size 13 tennis shoes.
The summer of 2011 brought us more productive test sessions. The next video shows the first use of the twin oar FootPaddle®. Several blade setups were tried including one that functioned as a retractable flap. This system was abandoned as it did not deploy quickly enough when the paddle first entered the water on each stroke.
Development virtually stopped until the summer of 2020. Read about our exciting progress designing and building the V3 prototype on our blog.