More Myth Busting

Remember the old joke about the Roman galley? One morning, the bloke with the leather pants and the whip struts onto the catwalk and shouts: "OK slaves, listen up! I have good news and bad news! The good news is, you have the morning off. The bad news is, this afternoon the Captain's going water skiing."
Well, Rick Thompson writes:

Chris,
Great clip of the duct tape boat. Have you seen the water skiing behind a rowboat episode? It's also on YouTube. OK, so it took the Stanford crew to do it - how about we try it with one of our rowing skiffs?
All the best,
Rick

It seems to me that the main problem was not the crew keeping up the speed, but the waterskiier staying upright through the recovery, when the boat slows down suddenly. We need to find a midget with elastic arms.