I've been bouncing some ideas around for summer fun, and was thinking of picking up a PWC. I've ridden a bunch of sit-downs (the Yamaha GP1300R being my favorite), yet have never owned one.

Can anybody weigh in on launching, maintenance, and ownership experience?

I'm looking for easy, relatively cheap, hassle free fun.

Don't mind the routine maintenance, but don't want to deal with a money pit either...

 

I've driven all the top PWCs.

1) The Kawasaki Ultra 300x - twin supercharger, 300hp, heavier than the rest, but boy does that thing hook up in the wake. I had a Ultra 260x (260hp) with some mods, yes it was a bit on the heavy side but in huge wakes I used to kill the seadoo's and the yamaha's. They do require alot of care and attention for maintence, since they are F/I.

2) Seadoo RXP, the lightest of them all, and fastest in flat water. But, the ride was very tiring in the wake. They are also very reliable! Horsepower: 260hp.

3) Yamaha FZR, somewhere in between the ultra and the RXP. I didn't like it to be honest, felt more of a family PWC. Yamaha don't disclose the HP for this machine but it is in the range of 200-250.

This is a costly hobby and time consuming to take care off post rides.

If you ride in fresh water it will be easy to maintain. If you ride in salt, you need to flush the jetski with fresh water after every ride + rinse the whole jetski + fog the supercharger.

I recently retired from the PWC world (sold my ultra 260x ) and got myself a seadoo jetboat.

Best of luck.

 

Sea-Doo RXP is the way to go if you want to have performance and handling, it's the closest thing I've felt to being on rails on the water. Watch the swamp runs in Louisiana on Youtube.

But as Kayman says I've only experienced it on flat water, and I mean flat.

For anything else we have boats, plus I have more fun driving the boat with others wakeboarding.

 

Romain Jerome