But as ventured to compete in this fantastic event, we were permitted to race alongside Kawasaki’s perennial guru of go-fast testing and development, multi-time World Champion Minoru Kanamori. The units Kawasaki proved us to race were identical bone-stock 2014 Kawasaki Ultra 310R JetSkis, qualifying us for inclusion in the lauded Manufacturer’s Stock class – requiring zero modifications other than traction mats, seat covers and handlebars.
Below, we’ve included an incredible point-of-view video of Kanamori’s effort on July 20th. Kanamori did his best to give chase to Warner’s Monster Energy turbo-powered Kawasaki.
Although Kanamori held tightly onto second place for most of the race (including an impromptu fuel stop), Kanamori was bested by KC Heidler in the final moments, leaving Kanamori to claim third place overall and first in the Manf. Stock Class.
Here’s what the caption has to say:
“Kawasaki swept the entire top ten of the Long Beach to Catalina and Back Offshore National Championships, with Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Craig Warner winning for a historic 5th time on the Jet Ski Ultra 310R and Kawasaki’s Minoru Kanamori taking third place overall and first in the stock class. Watch some of Kanamori’s run in this GoPro video.”
Spending a couple of days with Yamaha’s Scott “Hollywood” Watkins has a way of getting standup skis on your mind. That’s how this week started for us at The Watercraft Journal, so when we stumbled across this restored vintage reel from Kawasaki’s “Good Times Theater,” we had to share it for this edition of Flashback Friday.
According to the video’s description, “This is one segment from the restored video player ‘Kawasaki Good Times Theater.’ The Good Times Theater video players were used at Kawasaki dealerships in the 1970’s for customer viewing on the showrooms. This restored video features great Kawasaki moments from the mid to late 1970’s. Audio quality on the restored video is fair, but clearly understandable. This is a great piece of Motorcycle History. Hope you enjoy it.”
This was just one of several promotional videos that helped introduce boaters and powersports enthusiasts to the all-new 400cc Kawasaki JetSki. A completely unique and innovative machine, the JetSki was unlike anything seen before, and by 1975, Kawasaki truly owned the water all the way until 1988 when both Sea-Doo and Yamaha introduced their sitdown entries.
It wasn’t more than a couple of weeks ago that we were driving through sunny Southern California’s Inland Empire. What was once acreage of farmland only decades earlier, has become a seemingly endless sea of stucco-walled suburban housing tracts and pristine business complexes. Nestled in a quiet corner of one such industrial parks rests the home of Renu Cleaners, LLC.
Greeted at the front door by Managing Partner, Nanette Moreno, the headquarters for the industry’s first dedicated personal watercraft cleaning system is expectedly immaculate. Jet Renu is only a division of the larger aforementioned Renu Cleaners, LLC that also provides top quality cleaning, restoration and protectant chemicals, sealers and waxes for the automotive aftermarket, the boating and marine industry as well as the whole of the powersports industries.
Celebrating its first year in production (as of this past June), Jet Renu has made a big splash in the PWC industry. Nanette explained that she was charged with launching a new product line, and as a personal watercraft enthusiast looked into reaching out to key persons within regional racing to help develop the new product.
“I first reached out to Ross Wallach (of RPM Racing Enterprises), who quickly took me under his wing,” Nanette told The Watercraft Journal. “He’s been instrumental in introducing us to some great people, especially the Disney family. We absolutely love them!”
Brent and Kyle Disney are two Junior Ski racers participating in the Jettribe West Coast Nationals PWC Series, who are consistently racking up points and hardware with each stop of the tour.
“We really pride ourselves on working with good people,” she continued. “It’s more important to us that the people associated with our product are positive, kind and friendly. We’d rather have great people on our team than the biggest names.”
As Jet Renu continues to gain traction in the PWC market, particularly through a new storefront in mega-retailer Amazon.com, the larger parent company wields over 23 years of experience with “product research and development as well as an advanced background in Marine reconditioning, sales and customer service,” according to Nanette, and husband Jim.
Although the facility is spacious, Nanette joked that they’re nearing maximum capacity with the demand for outgoing product, ” We will continue to develop new products for the market as well as our ‘vigilance to maintaining our ever changing environment.'”
According to the company’s official press release, “As our growth continues to move forward into the marine reconditioning aftermarket, are resources will be devoted to ensure we are the most service orientated and innovative company in the industry.”
As for the future, Nanette is increasing optimistic. “We’ll be at the World Finals again this year. We had so much fun last year with our ‘wheel of fortune’ prize giveaways, so we’ll be doing it again. We never miss one of Ross’ events either and just love the riders and racers that we support. We’re so happy with the new friends we’ve made in the sport.”
Being a company handling the development, bottling and distribution of chemicals and cleaners in California, all eyes are on Jet Renu to abide by the state’s ever-constricting environmental laws. “We are certified ‘green’ company,” Nanette beamed. “We manufacture all of our products in strict adherence to state regulatory laws. We even have 24-hours to collect rain water runoff from our building and get it tested by a state-approved lab. We’ve never missed one yet.”
So what is The Global AquaMoto GP Championships, you ask? It’s a race that every PWC has a class to race in. According to event coordinator, Chris “Fish” Fischetti, “This is what our sport has been missing for years, and it is time to get back to where the racing, excitement and fun that our sport originated from.”
Scheduled for September 26-28, 2014, AquaMoto has also changed the skill level of racers: The all-new Beginner Class (B Class) is aimed for new or less-experienced racers. New additions to the The Global AquaMoto GP Championships include the Aqua Moto Timed Track, which Fish calls “a lot like slalom, just with more turns), and is open to all classes and levels of riders.
Likewise, the Aqua Moto continues to be the only event where standard close course racing is restricted to only Vintage Ski, and all other Ski Classes, Sport and X2 classes.
A second new event is the Long Course Race, dubbed the “King of Body Beach Super Course.” This will be a dead engine LeMans-style start. Every skill level of rider will race together in each division to determine the King of Body Beach. It will feature a simplified buoy long course track with a very long first turn to space out all the racers. This will allow runabout racers to ride safe at speed on a larger track. Best of all, every kind of PWC can be the King of Body Beach.
Finally, the “Flow Moto” or freestyle event will pin rider against rider in an elimination-style format where they’ll be judged on speed, style and tricks. The last two meet Rail to Rail in a final. But that’s not all! AquaMoto is proud to announce a huge name in the freestyle industry advising on event aspects of the Freestyle Flow moto: Eric Malone!
As Fish explained to The Watercraft Journal, “This is an awesome way to put a spotlight on PWC racing back on the main stage with the Action Sports Market. AquaMoto – Safety comes first, new insurance, new starting gate, new race and track design, and some awesome post race parties.
“We are seeking support to make this race successful and help steer the ‘coolest water sport’ in a positive direction. I have amassed the industry’s greatest talent and knowledge for an event that will showcase our sport!”
If you didn’t already have 10,000 different reasons to attend the annual IJSBA World Finals, one in particular was the ever-present Jettrim Vintage Museum booth. The large pavilion was home to some of the sport’s most iconic standup skis, including some of the best examples of classic racing machinery, posters, advertisements, and banners. Pulled from Jettrim president Gary Hart’s own private collection, the museum was always a sight to behold.
Unfortunately, due to extraneous circumstances, Gary’s vault of vintage skis won’t be made available to the public. But fear not! Scott Frazier and all of the IJSBA are on the case. To get the whole story, you have to start with a post recently published on Gary and Kelly Hart’s Facebook wall that stated:
Hi folks, We are unable to do the Jettrim Vintage Museum this year, but Scott Fraizer, the director of the IJSBA is going to do one for us. This is the letter Scott sent us [see below]. Please respond to him if you are interested in helping. – Gary and Kelly
The original note/press release published by Scott read as follows:
IJSBA is pleased to announce that the Jettrim Vintage Ski Museum will return for 2014 albeit as a community managed exhibit.
Due to circumstances beyond their control, Jettrim cannot organize the museum for 2014. However, IJSBA will continue to provide the tent space and access for the community to bring their vintage watercraft and other collectible items from their own personal collections.
This museum would not have been possible if it were not for all of the hard work of Jettrim’s Gary Hart, a pioneer in the sport of PWC Racing products and a hall of fame inductee. IJSBA will continue to honor their contributions to the booth by giving them the same full sponsorship and endorsement credits that they have earned over the years. Jettrim is expected to produce the museum, again, in 2015.
If you would like to bring your vintage watercraft and collectibles, please email: [email protected]
The 2014 Jettrim Vintage Ski Museum will be the center fixture of the tradeshow portion of the 2014 Jettribe World Finals. The museum is slated to be open from Friday October 10 through Sunday, October 12.
We’ve had the same gear bag for the last five or six years. It’s held up pretty good. The zippers haven’t broken, the waterproof liner hasn’t torn and it doesn’t reek of mildew. The one major problem is that it’s just too dang small.
Cramming a vest into it and a pair of water shoes eats up all of the room, leaving little space for much else. If we pack a helmet? Forget it, you might as well bring another bag. Our bag, like so many, is really a nicely outfitted duffel, when in reality, want we find ourselves needing is a true full-sized gear bag.
Unfortunately, the slim pickings are slim when it comes to such an item. Slippery makes a decent bag, but again, it’s very limited on space. Now JetPilot’s Wake Wheelie bag is nice, but priced at $130 retail. Space is still a little tight when packing vests, gloves and booties for the whole family, but the rollers and rigid back is more up our alley.
That is why we gravitated towards Hydro-Turf’s Hydration Roller Bag. It’s voluminous, sturdy and surprisingly affordable (more on that in a little bit).
Stitched together from heavy-duty nylon, the Hydration Roller Bag weighs in at an impressive 29”x17”x14” tall. That’s some serious real estate to fill. Likewise, the bag features large wheels with sealed bearings that glide along smoothly, and can be pulled along by a molded handle grip.
Additionally, three thick nylon skids on the bottom provide some added rigidity and durability not found in many other bags. Heavy duty zippers seal the main area and full-width front pouch as well.
Our first use of the bag was possibly the best way imaginable: We loaded it with our old gear bag and a backpack and checked it on a cross-country flight. At the terminal the bag arrived safely, unscathed and no worse for wear.
The following week we loaded up the bag in the bed of our truck and headed to the lake with enough riding gear for two. Yes, it’s big and most of the time, you likely won’t need to fill it to the brim, but that’s not the point. It’s about having the space to fill in a bag that’ll hold up to the rigors of the outdoors.
Normally, the Hydro-Turf Hydration Roller Bag retails for $80, which is a great deal as it stands. But, because Hydro-Turf is friggin’ awesome they are offering a special deal to all you loyal readers of The Watercraft Journal: If you type in the code “CODE-TWJ” in the comment section at the end of the ordering process, you will not only get the Hydration Roller Bag for $50 (that’s a $30 savings) but you’ll also earn a 15% discount on all mats, seat covers and sheets of Hydro-Turf! (this cannot be combined with any other discounts.)
The discount won’t show up in your total, but will be applied by Hydro-Turf when the order is processed and the card is billed.
Again, we can’t say what a major offer this is. If you’re looking for an awesome gear bag, or even to score on some discount Hydro-Turf matting or seat covers, now is your chance! (Don’t say we don’t do nuthin’ for ya!)
Good salesmanship is problem solving, and Nick Ferrugia, owner of The Long Lake Grocery in Grand Traverse County, Colorado, has solved a major problem for many of his customers. When Nick noticed customers lined up across the street from the store at the public beach’s dock, he knew that something was up.
In an interview with Up North Live, Nick stated, “There were boats lining up to get on the dock to come get their pizza and other goodies. So I thought there’s got to be a better way.”
That’s when he decided to strap on a life jacket and take his pizza delivery service to the next level. Nick had a custom pizza holder fabricated that could hold up to six extra-large pizzas and mounted it to the back of a personal watercraft. “I can go 60-65 MPH, but there’s a balance between getting the machine up on the plane and not going too fast and hitting any waves because the pizzas like to move around. I already flipped one right in two,” said Ferrugia.
Of course, to keep the pizzas from getting too beat up, he keeps the speed under 20mph. So far, the endeavor has been a success, with the store is making deliveries around the lake Friday through Sunday (with a nominal $3 delivery fee). His customers still think it’s a pretty good deal.
Nick continued, “Most people are around boats and it’s the whole novelty of getting it delivered to you on a WaveRunner. They like to wave and say ‘hello,’ so I’m not sure if I’m making a delivery to them or if I’m just saying ‘hello.’”
“I’m having a lot of fun doing it. I’m not going to lie to you there!” Nick joked. He also said he’d like to upgrade to a pontoon boat so he can deliver more orders, and is even considering using a snowmobile for deliveries in the winter.
Normally, this is not the sort of thing you’d find here at The Watercraft Journal, solely because we purposely try to avoid the glorification of people misusing personal watercraft in any form. But this footage is so dramatic, it’s almost mandatory viewing.
What you’re witnessing is a pair of renters having their afternoon narrowly cut short by another pair of renters veering uncontrollably too close to shore and eventually colliding with the beached Yamaha VX WaveRunner, catapulting the riders airborne.
This of course, will bring rider safety and renter aptitude into question. It is almost a punchline how little renters are instructed in the ways of riding, and owners are all but left to their own devices once they leave the showroom floor.
While we’re not advocating boater licensing for PWC, accidents like these are far too prevalent to be left unchecked. Below we’ve included the original description of the collision as well as the video itself:
“This is a wreck that I caught out of the corner of my eye while shooting two girls that were taking photos of each other before going on a jetski ride. I had to no idea why the girl was happy and then at last second scared. As I panned to my left and saw this other crazy jetski guy literally jump her jetski like a ramp!
“She had the craziest instinct to get off of the jetski at the last second to save her head – literally! The couple on the other jetski went flying into the sand after flying super high in the air. I was like [explicative deleted] at the ending as I could not imagine what I had captured and thank God no one was hurt in the end. CRAZY MUST WATCH!”
Although everybody walks away from the accident, there’s some seriously NSFW language that we need to caution:
The QPWC’s new leadership – veteran riders and Australian champions Dan Fox, Tim O’Neil and Tony Gray – as well as renown race director Ross Moore, provided an excellent event.
Wintertime in Queensland, Australia doesn’t have snow-covered mountains, leaving you sitting by the fire wishing summer was here so you can get back on the water and rip up some buoys. All year ’round you can get out there, though some mornings are a bit fresh. So having a race in the middle of winter isn’t to much of a big deal.
The Queensland Personal Watercraft Club started off this winter with a bang (remember, we’re on the other side of the equator) this past 26th and 27th of July.
The QPWC is under new management for 2014, with Dan Fox as the club’s new president, and did a fine job last weekend making the Winter Titles event at Atkinson Dam one to attend. Plenty of skis and spectators adorned the beach, with everyone keen to get some racing started.
In an interview with The Gatton Star, Fox said, “[Atkinson Dam’s] a great location for racing. We’ve got guys from the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Toowoomba racing and it’s a bit of a central location for them.”
The Ski Open class went to James Xveres who won the title, followed by Michael Stevens, as Tam Clucas was the only female entrant. Tam fared extremely well amid a field of triple-cylinder Kawasakis and Yamahas.Anthony Lo put up a good fight on his Ultra Kawasaki but was kept off of the podium.
Racers from all over the East coast (a 1,800km or 1,120-mile drive didn’t stop a few of the boys) ventured to Atkinson Dam to scratch that itch that is PWC racing. By the look of some of the skis, it was going to be a exciting day ahead. It was so good to see so may pole (standup) ski riders turn up.
Practice on Saturday was short and sweet with a bit of course adjustments and fine tuning before a thunderstorm rolled in (just in time to wet all my campfire timber – I had decided to camp out that weekend).
Mick Stevens reported: the pole ski classes were combined for the weekend’s racing, with Open class showing four triple Kawasakis and one triple Yamaha, as well as having one female rider on a Lites Kawasaki.
We new the racing was gonna be fun as we had former Australian champion Tony Grey and also Justin Windsor and James “X-Man” Xveres to throw a spanner in the works.
The Pro Open Runabout class welcomed Worx Racing’s Guy Greenland, but saw Sunday’s win go to Brendan Boyd and his RXT-X whose speed and reliability kept him on top.Michael Stevens rode hard and reeled in the second place spot on the podium in Ski Open.
X-man’s Yamaha was definitely showing some speed, winning three out of the class’ four motos and Michael Stevens winning the second moto on the Kommander Industries Kawasaki.
Fox continued, “It was fantastic and you couldn’t have asked for a better winter’s day. For the first race meet of the season we were happy with it and looking forward to the next one.”
Atkinson Dam will host to an additional four rounds of the Winter Titles over the next few months. QPWC president Fox – who earned second place in the Runabout Open class, admitted it was a great start to the season. “We have four more rounds to go at Atkinson Dam and then we’ll break for Christmas and come back in February for five rounds at Redcliffe,” Fox concluded.
The 2015 Australian tour has already been announced and ready to go, so hopefully everyone is getting their race skis ready.
Although competition was fierce, this was a club event after all, and everyone was happy to lend a hand and help one another between motos.
QPWC Winter Titles – Atkinsons Dam Qld July 26-27
Ski Open: 1. James Xveres, 2. Michael Stevens, 3. Justin Windsor; N/A & Sports: 1. Justin Calvert, 2. Jamie Eade, 3. Clyde Grant; Beginner Runabout: 1. Brett Douglas, 2. Sam Barrott, 3. Fraser Heaton; Amateur Stock: 1. Mathew Atallah, 2. Wade Clucas, 3. Dave Albert; Pro/Am Stock: 1. Mitch Wyatt, 2. Mark Dallow, 3. Greg Hack; Pro Open: 1. Brendan Boyd, 2. Dan Fox, 3. Justin Belczowski
Several years ago, while I worked as the Associate Editor for the now defunct monthly magazine Corvette Fever, the printers had erroneously reprinted the beginning 30-or-so pages twice, replacing the centerfold and major features. Obviously, this caused quite the stir and upset a significant amount of subscribers who demanded refunds for the botched issue (which was never reprinted correctly).
I mention this because many readers of The Watercraft Journal might’ve noticed we’ve experienced a few technological hiccups over the last week. Heck, just last night we had to revert to a “basic” layout to iron out some final wrinkles. Thankfully, we’ve isolated the gremlins and are feverishly working to not only restore your favorite personal watercraft magazine to its former glory, but actually radically improve its functionality with mobile devices and tablets.
Unfortunately, these last two days of triage shut down our analytic record keeping, thus making it impossible for us to properly celebrate us clearly achieving our goal of surpassing 14,000 individual readers for the month of July. Obviously, any good trending statistician will take a look at our curve and agree that yes, we reached our goal, but again, we want to always be forthright with the information we present.
That being said, this edition of “By The Numbers” also marks the conclusion of our third quarter. That’s a big deal indeed, as those companies who are already preparing for the closure of the riding season are looking for the right resources to help keep them busy through the winter. Again, because The Watercraft Journal is the only daily magazine that publishes original and compelling content Monday through Friday, we are the perfect partner to help broadcast your products and services to the widest audience in our sport.
November 2013 Through July 2014
July 2014
More Content For More Readers
Do you want to know why advertising in The Watercraft Journal has more value than print? We aren’t limited by page count – enabling us to happily publish an endless supply of intelligently-written, engaging content endemic to your brand. Advertisers benefit from a full-calendar’s worth of specific articles highlighting their products, services and promotions in the industry. You don’t get that in print. You don’t get that anywhere else.
Feature articles published in July: 13
Total word count: 12,771 words*
*When this number is translated to print publication standards equals a 108-page magazine. Please note that this number does not include an average of two uniquely-written news articles published daily.
More People For More Exposure
Producing more articles than anybody else doesn’t do you any bit of good if nobody is reading them. Thankfully, that is not the case for The Watercraft Journal. The quality grade of our content combined with our unmatched velocity has garnered us the largest reading audience of any personal watercraft magazine today. Our advertisers get access to more potential customers than with any other publication through endemic feature articles, monthly news releases and updates and high impact advertising.
July
Total number unique readers: 13,695*
Total number of articles read: 34,402
Percentage of new readers: 63.48%
Top (5) Nations in 2nd Quarter:
United States – 11,402
Canada – 1,491
Australia – 1,330
United Kingdom – 555
Greece – 331
Total unique readers: 70,602*
Total Articles Read: 230,986
Percentage of new readers: 60.09%
All-Time Top (5) Nations:
United States – 70,944
Australia – 9,325
Canada – 6,248
United Kingdom – 4,943
New Zealand – 2,176
Total Percentage of Mobile Device Users: 39%
*This number is considered equal to an individual sale of a single copy of a magazine.
More Readers With a Wider Reach
It’s been a nice compliment that so many media outlets are doing their darnedest to either match, mimic or even surpass what we accomplish here at The Watercraft Journal. But since the launch of Our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and weekly newsletter, The Watercraft Journal has made it a point to use social media to its fullest extent to bring the PWC enthusiast industry all of its daily content in fastest ways possible.
Total Facebook Followers: 9,302
Total Twitter Followers: 207
Total Instagram Followers: 591
Total Weekly Newsletter Subscribers: 728
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43YuOUHKFKE
Are You Ready For This?
We’re only nine months into publishing the Internet’s only daily personal watercraft magazine and we’re already the single-most popular magazine in the United States of America. We’ve welcomed over 70,000 individuals to our site who have read over 230,000 articles! That’s a staggering number that many in our industry can’t really wrap their heads around. But that’s OK, we want you to join the party and advertise with us anyways! Support the fastest-growing magazine this sport has seen and see your business exposed to more readers and enthusiasts than anywhere else!
Below, we’ve included an incredible point-of-view video of Kanamori’s effort on July 20th. Kanamori did his best to give chase to Warner’s Monster Energy turbo-powered Kawasaki.
“We really pride ourselves on working with good people,” she continued. “It’s more important to us that the people associated with our product are positive, kind and friendly. We’d rather have great people on our team than the biggest names.”
Cramming a vest into it and a pair of water shoes eats up all of the room, leaving little space for much else. If we pack a helmet? Forget it, you might as well bring another bag. Our bag, like so many, is really a nicely outfitted duffel, when in reality, want we find ourselves needing is a true full-sized gear bag.
