Loved it when the boat took off and the truck tube Bent in half; I made a harness for it that worked ok. We tried rubber rafts,..... Not so good. We did have good luck with one of those red and blue canvas/rubber rafts, but the pillow section would hit you in the face and the spray was vicious.
My first skis were "cut-downs" someone had done to make trick skis, they didn't have fins
until my dad screwed some on. My Dad always liked a good joke, that's why when I was 9, I woke up on Christmas to a new KID SIZED pair of water skis
. Only problem was we lived in Omaha at the time and the Boat was still in NH.