A sitting dock start is always the easiest, by this I mean sitting on the edge of a dock with the board in the water. First thing you do is hold the board horizontally in front of you. For those of you laterally challenged, this means flat, not sticking in the air or pointing at the boat, flat! Second, you don't need a bunch of slack in your hand like slalom skiiers do when dock starting. There should little or no slack in the line, the boat should be straight out in front of you, and your board should be flat.

Since you are pretty much in a standing position, all you have to do is let the board straighten out when the boat starts moving. Don’t try to hold the board flat, let it turn and point forward, the fins should do this for you. Like I said, the dock start is the easy part. If possible, try this way first, just so you can get a feel of it. But you're still gonna have to learn the deep-water start…