Personal Watercraft

A personal watercraft is a recreational vessel designed to carry a small number of riders who sit or stand on top of the craft, widely known by the brand name Jet Ski even though that name belongs to Kawasaki alone, with Yamaha selling its own version as the WaveRunner, Bombardier as the Sea-Doo, and Honda as the AquaTrax. Water scooters first appeared in the United Kingdom and continental Europe in the mid 1950s, including the British Vincent Amanda and the German Wave Roller, and the Sea Skimmer, a motorized surfboard reaching 40 kilometers an hour, followed in 1961. Clayton Jacobson II of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, developed the modern design through the 1960s and had a working prototype using a pump jet rather than an outboard motor by 1965, and Kawasaki began mass producing a stand up version under the Jet Ski name in 1972, reaching the United States market in 1973 before the now more common sit down design overtook it in popularity. The craft is propelled and steered by an inboard engine driving a pump jet with a screw shaped impeller, typically carries two or three riders, and some modern models hold enough fuel to cruise more than 160 kilometers.