A Look on the Personal Watercraft’s History

Snaking on the waters with your personal watercraft is a great experience. The ride alone gives you a heightened sense of excitement. But have the thought of the personal watercraft’s history came to your mind? If not, then just read on and add some personal watercraft knowledge into your memory bank.

The concept of a vehicle that functions like a scooter on water was initiated by the Bombardier family in the late sixties. What they wanted was to create a water version of the famed Ski-Doo snowmobile. After all, they are a clan who love water sports, since most of their summer vacations took place on and around the lakes of the Laurentian region of Quebec.

The Bombardier family, in a move to make reality their dream, commissioned Clayton Jacobsen II to design such machine. Jacobsen also dreamt of creating a motorcycle-like vehicle that navigate on water with relative ease and speed. The two parties joined their heads and their resources to realize the first ever personal watercraft.

Jacobsen initially began with a stand-up design. Bombardier, on the other hand, pushed for a model that allows that rider to sit while operating the machine. The Bombardier family gave Jacobsen with an 18-hp Rotax engine to begin with and eventually made a successful prototype of a sit-down design of his machine.

In 1968, the Bombardier family and Jacobsen were able to pull of a successful series of tests and soon announced the birth of the Sea-Doos (a play on the name of Bombardiers famous snowmobile line). Bombardier then updated the engine and integrated it with a liquid cooling mechanism after a year. The move was an update of Jacobsen’s design, which was basically cooled by air intake. But soon, the Bombardier family gave up on the project as they failed to solve mechanical issues as other problems with the engine.

Jacobsen tried to convince the Bombardier company to go on with project. He insisted that the models needed to be tweaked and adjustments should be made like integrating rubber components and waterproofing the body. Jacobsen’s suggestions were ignored by Bombardier and the project was shelved.

Jacobsen, adamant that he was, bought the rights of the patent and sold the design to Kawasaki in 1971. With ramifications by Jacobsen and the engineering technologies of Kawasaki, they were able to create a better, more functional type of personal watercraft. In 1973, Kawasaki launched the first commercial personal watercraft, the Jet Ski. Today, the term Jet Ski includes all types of water crafts, even though it is a trade name registered for the use of Kawasaki Motors.

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