Technical History
Historical
information about Personal watercrafts
It is far from certain just when the first personal watercraft (PWC)
appeared. For one thing, the concept is much older than its official
definition, which the US Coast Guard finally formalized as, "...a Class
A (16 feet long and less) inboard boat designed to be oper-ated by a
person sitting, standing or kneeling ON the craft rather than in the
conventional manner of sitting or standing INSIDE the craft." This
description did not exist when the Vincent Motorcycle Company, in 1955
(its final year of business), marketed the single-saddle 200cc. Amanda
Water Scooter
Or when Southern California inventor Clayton Jacobson II
built the first known standup in 1965.
Jacobson's aluminum-hulled,
rigid-handpole unit morphed into a sit-down craft in the process of his
collaboration with snowmobile manufacturer Bombardier, primarily due to
the engine. A wide, flat hull was chosen to support the weight of the
larger than prototyped 318cc Rotax, and with the air-cooled engine's
need for cooling ducts resulted in a very wide hull-fully a foot and a
half wider than the craft that were to follow. This made the 24-hp,
30-mph Sea-Doo® model 320
slow steering and rough riding, but it was the
engine's poor reliability and susceptibility to corrosion, together with
the company's decision to focus on the booming snowmobile business,
which killed off the craft after the 1970 model year. Jacobson had
continued development of
the standup however, but was not able to take his ideas to market as
long as Bombardier retained the rights. When the company pulled out of
the market, Jacobson went straight to Kawasaki. His prototype was by
this time fiberglass and sported a patented pivoting handpole and the
now-famous self-righting ability. Kawasaki and Jacobson modified one of
the company's snowmobile engines and the Kawasaki Jet Ski®, the first
commercially successful PWC and the one with the longest continuous
manufacturing history, was born. Initial Jet Ski® sales were anemic, but
by the advent of the JS440 in 1977.
Big Green was riding a wave of
increasing interest in personal watercraft generated by its own
strategic,
lifestyle-oriented marketing. A major motion picture was also to play a
role however. That same year, the highly successful James Bond movie,
The Spy Who Loved Me.
(United Artists, 1977) further entranced the
public with the personal watercraft concept when the feature film
depicted actor Roger Moore riding a water-going motorcycle; a one-off,
Tyler Nelson-patented, ski-steering craft which was later manufactured
by Spirit Marine, then a division of Arctic Cat. The first dual (front
and rear) steering PWC, the 50-hp Suzuki-powered Wetbike®
Wetbike history pictures
was
given a 60-hp 800cc engine and a much lighter body in 1986 by its later
marketer, the Ultranautics Corp., who stopped production six years
later. Wisconsin-based Surf Jet Corp. begin manufacturing in 1980 a
17-hp Subaru-powered surfboard. The company's guiding light, competitive
surfer and entrepreneur Bob Montgomery, later founded Powerski
International, maker of the current Jetboard®, a Surfjet-inspired board
powered by a Husqvarna engine. Wetjet Corp. introduced a 428cc craft by
the same name in 1985, which was sold to new owners in 1992 and is
currently produced in four 701cc models.
PWC magazines such as Splash,
Personal Watercraft Illustrated and Water Scooter (now
Watercraft World), appeared in the mid-80s to coincide with
this period of rapid industry growth. In 1987, Yamaha debuted its own
exciting Waverunner®
and 15 years later would market the world's first
major name four-stroke craft, the 9000-rpm FX140
based on its highly
successful R-1 sportbike engine. In 1988, Bombardier re-entered the
market after a 17-year hiatus by returning the Sea-Doo®
a sit-down
watercraft powered by engines built by the company's Rotax subsidiary.
In returning the Sea-Doo®, Bombardier enlisted the help of the sons of
the two engineers of the original 1968 project
In 1992 and 1993,
snowmobile giants Polaris,
and
Arctic Cat,
respectively, joined the fun. Polaris quickly established itself as a
major force and earned kudos from the California Air Resources Board for
being the first PWC to meet that state's stringent 2001 emissions
standards, while Arctic Cat's Tigershark®, a craft powered by a Suzuki
engine and actually marketed as part of the Suzuki product line in
Europe, ceased production in 2000 after making a very good showing and
even marketing a DFI model -
- the TS 1100 Li. In 1995, Southern
California-based Aquajet Corp. introduced the Jetbike®
a narrow,
dual-steering, water-planing motorcycle after the Wetbike tradition, but
with the requisite 90s styling, and at the 2001 model dealer show, Honda
unveiled an upcoming turbocharged four-stroke powered PWC based on its
1100XX bike engine.
2003 Standup are
back !
2004 RXP Seadoo, the most powerful PWC on earth
215 HP !
PWC Sales
At the beginning of the 2000 model year, there were four major players
in the PWC market: Kawasaki, Yamaha, Bombardier and Polaris. These
manufacturer's three- and four-person models are showing the strongest
growth. According to the USCG, there were approximately 1.1 million PWC
on the water during the 1998 boating season. The average retail price of
a PWC is about $10,000. Since the mid-1990s, sit-down style,
multi-passenger watercraft have made up the vast majority -- over 97% of
all PWC sales.
Research indicates that the average purchaser of a new PWC is 41
years old and has a household income of $95,400. Eighty-five percent are
male, 71% are married, 69% owned a powerboat prior to their most recent
PWC purchase, and 66% have taken or completed college-level course work.
This buyer rides a PWC most often with family and friends, and
surprisingly, the majority of PWC owners shun aggressive maneuvers while
riding and fewer than one percent report racing around buoys as a
typical activity. PWC owners spend more than $300 million on their sport
annually. In addition to the purchase of the PWC, they spend money on
boating registration fees, launch fees, trailers, fuel, insurance,
clothing, accessories, travel and watercraft-oriented vacations.
Societal Impact
The direction the personal watercraft industry has taken in recent years
has largely been due to effect the growing sport has had on local
communities. The first skirmish between municipal authorities and PWC
enthusiasts was over the sound level of PWC engines. Makers such as
Yamaha and Bombardier responded with sophisticated exhaust silencing
systems. The next issue was the effect of PWC on shorebound waterlife.
Unlike boats, PWC can be ridden in very shallow water, causing the
disturbance of plant and animal life that are part of the ecosystem of
the water body. The average PWC's top speed has climbed into the 50s and
most manufacturers have responded to the demand for more sporting
ability and the increased popularity of multi-person models by offering
an ultimate power version of their largest models which easily ex-ceeds
60 mph.
The craft's high relative speed and superior maneuverability
combined with its low water depth requirement have made it especially
irritating to the public occupying shoreland areas however. These
concerns-the raspy, droning two-stroke motor and the shallow water
disturbance-have been addressed by legislation which defines off-shore
distances PWC
are to be restricted to, and in many cases restricts PWC use to certain
times of the day, and in a few cases completely bars the older PWCs from
certain waters-the National Park Service has closed 62 U.S. park waters
to PWC, and California's Lake Tahoe permits only CARB 2006-complaint
craft. Recently, two concerns have been foremost: the PWC's exhaust
emissions, and the sport's increasing safety problems. The carbureted
two-stroke engine, until very recently the standard powerplant of the
PWC industry, together with outboard motors generates over a billion
pounds of HC emissions each year. These high emissions are attrib-utable
to the two-stroke engine's emission of as much as 30% of its fuel charge
-- part of which is oil -- into the water and air. Just 7 hrs of use of
these older carbureted marine engines reportedly releases into the
environment as much pollutants as a modern car driven 100,000 miles.
Although PWC manufacturers are, in response to increased societal
scrutiny, developing four-stroke engines, millions of examples of the
older two-stroke designs still exist. Of equal consideration at present,
because of the amazing growth of personal watercraft activity, is that
of safety. Although the boating community has long policed itself with
well-established rules of navigation and has enjoyed a good relationship
with the U.S. Coast Guard, supporting its safety requirements and
abiding by its laws, the PWC industry has only recently begun to impress
on its members the fact that PWCs are in fact boats and thus are
included in boating laws and rules. Of special concern to authorities
are the widespread use of PWC by adolescents, the disproportionate
representation among PWC users within overall marine accident fatality
statistics, the need for increased awareness of the use of personal
floatation devices (PFDs), and the dangers of alcohol use while on the
water. At present, fully 30% of marine accidents involve PWCs, though
they constitute fewer than 10% of the craft on the water. Over 200
safety bills were considered by state legislators in 1999. Out of this
came the establishment of minimum operator's ages, the requirement of
special operator's certificates (acquired by taking and passing a safe
boating course), the toughening of alcohol offenses to include DUI hits
on an operator's automobile driving license (and in some cases jail time
-- one third of all boating fatalities are alcohol related), stiffer PFD
and dead-man (lanyard) switch requirements, and new restrictions against
night-time operation.
