In welcome news to those in the marine powersports industry, sales of boats in the third quarter of 2013 surged to higher than expected numbers. According to Soundings Trade Only, a publication dedicated to marine industry professionals, sales in the main powerboat segment were up nearly 14% over the same quarter in 2012. The strong summer quarter saw 35,580 units being sold, an increase of over 4,315 boats over the summer of ’12.
Despite a slow spring season, the strong summer quarter pushed total sales to over 181,625 units, over 2,000 more than the year 2012. Industry analysts expect the year to finish out strong, putting total sales ahead of last year. This is encouraging news for those in the Marine Industry as 2012 was the first time sales have topped 200,000 since the “Great Recession” of 2009.
Aluminum pontoon boats were the strongest sellers in the third quarter up nearly 20%, with fiberglass boats in the 11-40’ category close behind selling nearly 1,600 more than the year prior. These two categories, along with aluminum fishing boats have traditionally strong sellers, helping boost sales numbers industry wide.
Last but not least PWC and ski boats boasted double digit gains as well. PWC saw gains of over 15%, pushing total sales to 15,467 units. Sea-Doo’s departure from the jet boat market caused a decrease in sales numbers, something thought to be changed once other manufactures step into the market to fill the void.
Overall those in the marine powersports industry can look at this data as positive news after several years of low sales numbers. As the country claws its way back from the brink of economic meltdown retailers can rest assured knowing that consumers will likely increase their spending on luxury items once their confidence returns.
With the Daytona Freeride closing down on us like a earthbound missile, all of the freeriders are gearing up for kicking off 2014 with an insane bang! It takes only a cursory search on Facebook to see all of the world’s best riders are building custom skis (ie. Ross Champion, Zack Bright, Mark Gomez, etc.), while others are teaming up with new sponsors.
That being said, it was Rad Dudes Freestyle Innovations who recently made the announcement of adding New Jersey’s Chris Grace to their roster, stating:
We would like to Officially welcome Chris Grace to the Rad Dudes. He will be representin’ the East Coast Freestyle assault team. Looking forward to rippin’ it up soon.
In addition to his flatwater riding skills, Grace is an experienced freerider who when he isn’t getting inverted off the coast of the Garden State, is working at Cape Jet Ski, in Wilwood, NJ. We hope to see Grace charging the surf in Daytona, and throughout the rest of the year and pass on our congratulations!
With over 20 years of expert riding beneath his belt, multiple World Champion freestyle rider Rick Roy sought to revolutionize the sport that he loved – and mastered – by offering his own line of products to elevate the competitive freestyle rider and the sport itself. With RRP charging along at full steam, it didn’t take long for Roy to turn the dial up a few more notches.
Rick Roy and RRP launched their own custom hulls and complete ski designs over a handful of years ago, and the Rickter skis – FS, FR, RC, XFR, XFS and Ninja – have made waves (pardon the pun). In this past year alone, RRP and the Rickter crew brought home the highly desirable World Championship in Pro Freestyle at the IJSBA Hot Products World Finals in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Piloted by the gravity-defying Rok Florjancic, Roy and company amazed all with a ski and team that could accomplish what would be considered impossible only a few years earlier.
Because successful companies are never one to sit back on the laurels, RRP is pouring on the steam, opening up their new Thailand factory and R&D department. There the new carbon fiber and fiberglass hulls are meticulously hand-built, where resin is applied in a super sanitary vacuum process, oven baked, prepped, painted, wet sanded and assembled. Below is a fantastic 10-minute video introducing us to the new facility, staff, and the creation process, hosted by Rick Roy himself. It’s a fantastic peek into this normally private world. Enjoy!
My friendship with Jerry Gaddis all started with a friendly email warning me that I had really screwed up. In the final months before Personal Watercraft Illustrated would fatefully fold up, I had written a response in the monthly “Letters to The Editor” department asking why PWI wasn’t featuring more “conversion skis.” In this instance, the questioner was referring to performance enthusiasts who were shoehorning supercharged and turbo’ed Rotax 4-Tec engines into Yamaha GPR hulls. When done right, the result rendered insane triple-digit top speeds. When done poorly, the result was a snarky reply from a young magazine editor.
My first few hours spent with Jerry Gaddis were spent making speed runs on his turbocharged VXR.
My response to the letter reflected my narrow experience with these machines, and from what I had seen, wasn’t terribly impressive. The handful of conversion skis I had seen first-hand exhibited some questionable craftsmanship and in my response, I said something to that degree.
Unfortunately, the group of persons that my response offended – albeit not a majority – were tremendously vocal. And they wanted my head on a pike. The internet uproar was enough to warrant a word of cautionary warning from the founder and owner of the industry’s fastest-growing performance PWC forum, www.greenhulk.net.
Actually, my first statement’s not entirely true. In further reflection, Jerry and I had hit it off at various media gatherings previously, but I will always consider that one email as the moment Jerry put his arm around me in friendship…and kindly smacked me in the back of the head.
“Don’t give them a reason to turn on you,” he warned. “They’re really passionate about these things. They need to feel respected.” And he was right. So much so that I’ve carried Jerry’s words with me as my career transferred from print to digital publishing. No matter how divided our industry is, everyone wants to feel that the one fraction they care about is just as respected as the others.
The pair of Yamahas – a 2013 VXR and the all-new FZR SVHO – were selected for their use of the largest displacement engine in the PWC industry as well as for their lightweight design.
This too, was a lesson Jerry had to learn. Long before the enterprising Morgan City, Louisiana native launched his top-of-the-line performance hardware e-commerce store, PWCPerformance.com or transitioned his one-man blog into the fastest-growing personal watercraft enthusiast forum in the industry, Jerry was guy who wanted to push his supercharged Sea-Doo to the next level. Always a fan of fast toys, Jerry applied his know-how acquired through years of tuning on cars and boats to his new 2004 Sea-Doo RXP.
Greenhulk.net and pwcperformance.com are operated from inside of a detached garage off of Jerry’s Morgan City, LA home.
The apple-green two-seater caught the attention of his two small boys. From the moment Jerry brought the ski home, the two referred to it as the “green Hulk” after the temperamental gamma-radioactive superhero.
Although the 215-horsepower output far exceeded anything produced by the competition, for Jerry and the rechristened “Green Hulk,” it simply wasn’t enough. The project ski gave way to a personal blog, documenting the build process, the trials and errors and most notably, the successes. Word of the blog quickly spread and with followers came a flood of emails.
Unable to field so many questions, Jerry turned to friend Mike Trinastich to assist in transforming greenhulk.net from a blog to a vBulletin forum. Jerry wrote, “I decided to start this forum so that instead of discussing mods one-on-one through email, everyone could talk together in open forum.”
In the new format, greenhulk.net quickly grew. An influx of home garage tuners, ski builders and top level performance shops began participating, sharing their experiences and know-how and input.
Yet, until that point, greenhulk.net was just a hobby for Jerry. The third generation in a family business, Jerry’s bread-and-butter came from Life Saving Equipment & Repair, the manufacturer of The Roe Float lifeboat, Tuff Bags, tarps, signs, custom dive equipment and a major supplier oil and gas industry, the diving and trucking industries. As more and more requests came to Jerry asking for help in locating custom or unique performance parts, Jerry saw a need he could fill. The launch of 4tecperformance.com (later to be renamed pwcperformance.com), the online store could better connect performance enthusiasts with the parts they needed.
Part of helming the largest PWC performance forum in the industry, Jerry feels a certain responsibility to be on the cutting edge.
“The store provides me my play money,” Jerry laughs. “People think I’m Mr. Moneybags over here. [Life Saving Equipment] is still what puts a roof over my family’s head and food on the table.” Albeit deceptively modest, the seven-year success of the online store has elevated it to the notable ranking of RIVA Racing’s largest distributor, and the growth of forum has given Jerry possibly the single largest influential sway in the industry. When Yamaha introduced the 1.8L SHO engine in 2008, Jerry switched from a Sea-Doo to a WaveRunner, and so did thousands of loyal followers.
Not only does Jerry’s online store better connect performance enthusiasts from across the globe with the manufacturers who build the parts they need, but he also personally tests nearly every item he sells.
When Jerry opted to use the top-of-the-line MoTeC ECU, so did some of the largest ski builders and racers. And most recently, when Jerry expressed his interest in Yamaha’s big engine-in-a-little runabout, the VXR, so did public interest. It was this machine that was of particular interest when I came to visit the greenhulk.net headquarters earlier this month. The VXR was in the midst of research-and-development testing.
Force-fed by a HKS USA Turbo and controlled by a MoTeC ECU, the VXR had already blown past 90-miles-per-hour with one of Jerry’s “Greenhulk”-style pump. By the time I arrived, the Skat-Trak-built 14-vane pump had been shelved and a 12-vane 160mm pump from RIVA Racing was in its place. Encouraging me to “give it a go,” I held into the throttle far longer than recommended and clicked off a top speed of 89.6mph, the fastest the VXR had gone in its current setup. Unfortunately, the pressure was too much for the lowly VXR to handle.
Leaks sprang up, quickly filling the engine compartment. Pulling the ski back onto the trailer, the source proved too difficult to diagnose. Only until bringing it back to Jerry’s garage could he discover a spiderweb’s worth of cracks and fissures streaking across the pump tunnel. Despite the pump tunnel reinforcement kit, the pressures applied to the ski’s hull were too much for its original design. Shaking off the fiberglass dust from his shirt, Jerry shook his head, “Call it. Time of death: 1430 hours.”
“It’s not Yamaha’s fault at all. We’re pushing skis so far past the limits of its original design that we have to consider everything,” he explained. “If it wasn’t me discovering this, it’d be somebody else on the forum. Personally, I’d rather it be me than someone else.”
That afternoon Jerry was emailing Yamaha for a new ski. A week later, a new FZR hull arrived on a trailer. It’s a little unnerving the level of influence that can make calls like that. But Jerry will be the first to pass on the credit, “I do not take credit for this forum’s success though. It’s [the] forum members that actively participate that make this forum what it is.”
When it comes down to it, which is more important: features or fitment? I know for myself, and to the chagrin of my wife, I would much rather trudge around in a faded t-shirt, heavily broken-in jeans and a tattered pair of tennis shoes than say suit up in dress pants, a fitted buttoned-down shirt and some polished leather shoes.
Jettribe’s RS-16 Race Vest was designed – and is best suited – for athletically-built closed course racers. Larger casual riders might tend to find the fitment less than favorable.
Sure, I might prefer to look a little less presentable, but at least I’m comfortable, right guys? Now everything has its time and place and I wouldn’t want to attend a wedding or go to court in my usual kick-around clothes, but if there was only a way to have my cake and eat it too, I’d be a happy camper.
The same philosophy translates to PWC riding gear, in fact, almost more so. We’ve all been on rides with friends who continue to wear a ridiculously sun-bleached vest, it’s retro purples and yellows dimmed to near-unrecognizable hues. When asked, their answer is always the same: “It fits great.” Men are like that. We would rather be comfortable than anything else. So when reviewing Jettribe’s RS-16 Race Vest we had to weigh it appropriately.
Like so much of Jettribe’s race-prepped riding gear, you’re going to see more included features than you can count. One of the best attributes of a company with such an active racing program is Jettribe’s propensity to listen to the suggestions of their racers as well as race officials and safety crew. The result is a line of products that meets (if not exceeds) the standards for durability, safety and protection.
The RS-16 Race Vest is no different. Very similar in design to other side-entry race vests from JetPilot and Slippery, Jettribe’s RS-16 has a large single piece of compression molded foam for impact dissipation in front and back with an improved outer shell material for added protection.
Where the RS-16 could benefit from foam molding, it shines in additional features like lanyard buckles, Velcro-nationality flag on the shoulder and impact resistance and protection.
Using a proprietary CFM material exclusive to Jettribe, the RS-16 also features dual 38mm quick-release right-hand buckles which can be exchanged with other buckles. Other bonuses include a built-in lanyard attachment and Velcro-attached interchangeable flag patch.
Designed for racing, the RS-16 also features this innovative rescue handle for pulling downed riders out of the water. We hope you never have to use this.
But most iconic to the RS-16 is its built-in rescue harness. Sown into the left shoulder, the handle grip allows for the “easy retrieval of downed rider during a race.” The feature has been recognized by the IJSBA, APBA, and TJSBA Rescue Course Marshals. The RS-16 is also designed to seamlessly integrate with Jettribe’s race collar harness.
But where the long list of features ended, the fitment concerns rose. Let me begin by saying that I’m 6’2″ and 220-pounds. More lean, athletically-built riders might find the fit more encompassing, but for 85-percent of Americans who are toting a few extra pounds, it leaves much to be desired.
The thick impact-resistant foam panels in front and rear are nearly slab-straight, making the RS-16 feel a little like wearing a sandwich board. No matter how tight I cinched the plastic buckles, the vest never felt form-fitting. My sides were always exposed to the nylon straps, which when worn without something underneath it, caused considerable chaffing.
It’s also worth noting that the RS-16 has yet to receive the blessing from the USCG, which can deter those who regularly ride offshore. Frankly put, this vest isn’t meant for everyone, and its fair to say Jettribe designed it as such. Since it’s DNA traces directly to closed course racing, it’s best used there.
You’ve heard the term used over and over again, but what exactly is “cavitation” and why does it sap power from your supercharged runabout? In an excellent essay, the eggheads at Hydronautics Incorporated properly explain the phenomenon that causes these gorgeous helices.
While the image above might look like poetry in motion, it’s actually exactly the moment when your prop looses pressure. Briefly explained by io9, “As water slips around the propellers of a boat, there are places where it experiences sudden, extreme loss of pressure. The propeller is making a ‘hole'” in the water, and the more powerful that propeller is the more water it clears away. Water appears – for the most part – as a liquid on Earth because the atmosphere on Earth keeps it under pressure. Drop the pressure and the individual molecules of water come apart. The water boils, even at very low temperatures. When propellers lower the pressure on certain areas of the water, the water boils, and we see these bubbles.”
In its worst form, and when pushed to a saturation point, cavitation can cause severe harmonics. As the bubbles collapse, they can create powerful reverberating shockwaves, which can not only disrupt the flow of water around the propeller, but actually stress, weaken and break the prop itself. This effect has been commonly attributed to a loss of acceleration, traction and thrust in PWC.
We at The Watercraft Journal are very excited to announce the return of New Zealand’s awesome Yamaha NZ Festival of Freeride. Scheduled for the weekend of April 4-5, 2014, the Festival of Freeride promises to deliver on the same level of hardcore freeride action that all of us have come to expect.
Welcoming the world’s best freeriders from across the Kiwi Nation, the Southern Hemisphere and across the globe, the Festival of Freeride is already bringing in some serious attention from sponsors and riders alike. Below is the official announcement and a cool teaser trailer for next year’s event:
It’s back! The Yamaha NZ Festival of Freeride is happening again in early April 2014. After the success of the inaugural event earlier this year there was no doubt that this would become an annual fixture in the freeride calendar. The Auckland Jet Sport Association (AJSA) is proud to be hosting this event once again.
Big news also is that Yamaha NZ have once again stepped up and will be title sponsors of this years event. It is fantastic to have them on board once again as their support plays a key part in ensuring that we have a successful event. We simply could not do it without them.
The 2014 event will be held in early April next year at Karioitahi Beach, Waiuku on Friday April 4th and Saturday April 5th (with Sunday April 6th as a backup for horrendous conditions). We have moved north from the original Port Waikato location to a section of west coast beach that will better suit the event. This is the last weekend before the clocks are turned back and daylight savings ends for summer/autumn 2014. So make sure you get this into your diaries asap and organize your leave early.
The format of the event will remain unchanged. The emphasis is on ensuring that everyone enjoys themselves in a non-competitive and festival atmosphere. Karioitahi Beach is 10mins from Waiuku, a rural town that services the Franklin area and Awhitu Peninsular. Not only are there a variety of accommodation options but a supermarket, numerous takeaway outlets, and a couple of local watering holes that will give you a lot more choice than previously.
There is plenty more information to come, and over the next month or two we will release it as it becomes available. Entries will be available to anyone and everyone and we hope to see more people entered than last year. We encourage anyone participating, or interested, in freeride to come along and enjoy riding with others of all experience levels.
We can’t wait to see everyone back again for the Yamaha NZ Festival of Freeride 2 in April 2014.
The AJSA
Below is the great teaser for next April’s Festival of Freeride:
It’s hard to argue that no other US-based apparel company has put up a better effort to get their brand name on the backs of more racers and personal watercraft enthusiasts than Jettribe. Helmed by standup rider and hardcore racing lover Tony Vo, Jettribe has really hit its stride the in past four-to-five years.
Nowhere was this more evident that throughout the UWP-IJSBA Watercross National Tour and at the 2013 Hot Products IJSBA World Finals in Lake Havasu City Arizona. Jettribe was literally everywhere. Even in other manufacturers’ booths (even if they didn’t know it). Heck, the Jettribe Team was the only team to represent the USA at this year’s events in China and the lauded Kings Cup in Thailand.
Recently Jettribe put out this great little video recapping the World Finals experience. Beginning the first week of October, the world’s best jet ski racers converge on Lake Havasu, AZ to battle for a World Title. Jettribe highlights some personal interviews with a couple of this year’s top racers.
“So, who have you pissed off lately?”are the first words I hear on the other end of the phone. The joke has more bite than is communicated only because I know I’ve left quite the trail of ruffled feathers in my wake. Over my career as a powersports journalist, I chaffed with nearly every editor, publisher and art director I worked with. Yet, despite the occasional friction, I always managed to churn out work I was proud of, and ultimately, work people liked to read.
This time around though, I had done more than step on the proverbial toe. At September’s 2014 Kawasaki Dealer Meeting, I had managed to weasel my way aboard a ’14 Ultra 310LX. Mind you, the media wasn’t invited to ride any of the demo units, nor were any invited to do so. Nevertheless, I found myself ripping up the briny waters of San Diego’s Mission Bay atop a metallic green-and-black supercharged Kawi. It’s amazing what asking nicely can get you.
Surprisingly, I kept from crashing, sinking or setting the new ’14 FZR SVHO on fire. For me, that’s a really good day.
With the Zac Brown Band pumping out over the Jetsound speakers trying to drown out the whine of the Eaton blower, I greedily chewed up the short buoy course. While the performance of the new 310-horsepower Ultra left me swirling with glee, my goofy antics, particularly the wild get-off of mine near the beach, left many at Kawasaki ready to wring my neck. I had indeed, pissed the wrong people off.
Unfortunately, this was only one instance in a long résumé of bad behavior. Years earlier, I famously irked the good folks at Sea-Doo during the launch of the then-new RXT and GTX iS 255 runabouts. Racing alongside Greenhulk.net’s Jerry Gaddis, I managed to come up on the handlebars and completely tear the whole adjustable gauge cluster and bars free from the ski.
BRP’s engineers ballyhooed the feat and assured me that as pre-production units, the plastic used was not up to the grade that later production models would use (sure to their word, I’ve never torn another steering system free from a Sea-Doo since). Although not nearly as dramatic, I even managed to beach a RXP-X with Sea-Doo racer Cody Hawkins during a fun run up the St. Johns River where terra firma is literally nowhere to be found, just this past July.
Jerry struggled to isolate a leak that appeared after giving me a chance to run his turbo’ed VXR. The leak came from a series of cracks in the pump tunnel that I caused by running WOT for over half a mile.
Most recently, I had the opportunity to spend the better part of a week with Jerry Gaddis. Arriving to his home office in Morgan City, Louisiana, Jerry was eager to have me try out his newest creation, a near-insane turbo-powered Yamaha VXR. While I’ll be delving into the project ski a little further in a feature article to be published in the next few weeks, the turbo VXR had reached speeds in excess of 91 miles per hour with a previous setup.
This week though, Jerry was testing a new setup and trying to push the little ski-with-a-big motor back up to 90mph. Handing me the lanyard I topped Jerry’s top speed of 88.6 with 89.6, but I did so to the cost of shattering the Yamaha’s pump tunnel. At no fault of the Yamaha’s NanoXcel design, the entry level craft was never intended to cope with pressures of this magnitude, and for as long as I held into it.
Over the next few days, I was teased mercilessly that my ability to judge the difference in distance between a quarter mile and a mile needed work, as I had held into the throttle nearly four times longer during my speed run than was normal. The result was splintering the pump tunnel and cracking the reinforced thrust plate – effectively killing the ski completely.
As the new year dawns, I’ve already made vows to all three manufacturers to be on my best behavior, and to cut down dramatically on the shenanigans. It’s probably a promise I’ll fail to keep, but not for a lack of trying. I never intentionally try to spoil the fun, it just seems to end up that way. It’s got to be something hardwired in my psyche.
For many, this Christmas might be a little lean. Times can feel pretty tight and that is why we’re in full support of Yamaha’s all-new Certified Pre-Owned Program. The first of its kind in the personal watercraft industry, all “pre-owned” Yamaha WaveRunners are thoroughly inspected, serviced and prepped prior to being wheeled out onto the showroom floor. All of this is to make owning a Yamaha WaveRunner as easy as possible.
Part of owning a Certified Pre-Owned WaveRunner is picking up a unit that has not only passed a 35-point inspection that qualifies it for special financing and an exclusive one year warranty.
As Yamaha explains, all Pre-Owned WaveRunners are “required to pass a rigid 35-point inspection performed by a skilled, Yamaha-trained WaterCraft technician. From above the waterline and below, to the engine, hull and deck, no detail is overlooked.”
Once OK’ed according to Factory Yamaha specs, the Certified Pre-Owned WaveRunner is given “the best [limited] warranty coverage in the industry” providing a level of confidence in ownership unmatched by other manufacturers. Best of all, these WaveRunners qualify for Yamaha’s special financing offers, finally making purchasing a Pre-Owned PWC an affordable and fun option for those who otherwise might not be able to enjoy the water!
