From the April 2021 issue of Car and Driver.
Yamaha WaveRunners
Personal watercraft (PWC) are joyful machines. They exist purely for goofing around on the water, and even a 35-mph rental unit will displace your worries with rambunctious entertainment. But faster is always better, and Yamaha's 1.8-liter inline-four WaveRunners represent the penultimate level of PWC performance. Above them lie supercharged models, and below them . . . most everything else. So the question is: Do you really want more power than this?
It won't make much difference at the top end. Both the $12,549 GP1800R HO and the $1000-pricier VX Limited HO we sampled max out at 62 mph, close to the 65-mph governor that all PWC manufacturers impose. And they get to that top speed in a hurry. Unless you're on a quiet lake, your personal speed limit will likely be determined by physical stamina rather than outright horsepower. Both hulls will skip across chop, but throw a few wakesurf boats into your local waterway and it won't matter if you've got 300 horsepower: At 60 mph, there's a certain size wave you don't want to hit.
As for the differences between these two, the three-person Limited is more luxurious (ours came with a wonderfully preposterous stereo) while the GP1800R is harder edged, carving turns that might toss passengers overboard. Either one is a blissful means of escape, the offshore speedboat experience distilled to a seat and a set of handlebars.
Sea-Doo Wake 170
Think car prices are crazy? Wait until you see what goes on in the boating world, where people take out 20-year loans to buy wakeboarding boats priced like houses with the monthly payments of a car.
If you're not falling for that mind trick, there is a financially sane alternative to making your wave-jumping action-hero fantasies a reality. The $12,299 Sea-Doo Wake 170 costs less than the cheapest new car you can buy, makes 73 percent more power, and is way more fun when you launch it into a lake. Sea-Doo bills the Wake as the only personal watercraft designed specifically for tow sports. It has a rack for carrying a wakeboard, an optional 100-watt Bluetooth audio system for blasting Limp Bizkit, and a telescoping pylon that raises the tow-rope mounting point to help wakeboarders get bigger air.
In Sport mode, the 170-hp Wake accelerates hard with hair-trigger responses, which is why Sea-Doo also includes a Ski mode that delivers gentle starts for the person at the other end of the rope. The Wake makes a predictably small wave compared with the splash of a six-figure boat with ballast tanks. You won't get monster-truck hang time jumping the Wake's wake, and no one will be riding the Sea-Doo's surf without a rope. But the Wake 170 gets you on the water for a fraction of the cost of most alternatives, and no matter the size of the wave, wakeboarding always beats swimming.
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The Link LonkMarch 18, 2021 at 05:06AM
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Yamaha WaveRunners and Sea-Doo Wake Ride the Wave - Car and Driver
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