Super Simple
and Great Fun
Too!
Get Ready for Your First Personal Watercraft Tour
My wife and I are hooked. We
love the summer breeze wafting through our hair and the soothing sun warming our bodies. We
thrill to the sparkling scenery, the
exhilarating escape — and the unfettered freedom of getting away from
our daily grind. Yes, we spend
countless summer days skimming the
waves, exploring waterways we’d
never get to see otherwise, and we
do it all from the seat of our personal watercraft. That’s PWC for short,
but our Sea-Doo GTX from BRP is
anything but.
Like other family cruisers from the
likes of Yamaha and Kawasaki, our
PWC is rated as a three-seater, so
there’s ample room for two and
plenty of storage space for day tripping, too. Make sure everything is
packed tight (use a couple of towels
as space filler if necessary) because
movement vibrations or wave riding
can damage an unsecured camera or
a loose sandwich.
Today’s clean, 4-stroke PWCs
operate very quietly, with low emissions and no smoke, good fuel economy and no odour…plus their state
of the art technology is incredibly
reliable and durable. They are powerful enough to carry three adults
easily and as stable as standing on
your front porch. What’s more, you
can ride all day without getting wet
if you choose, although on hot days,
a good splash is always refreshing!
their handlebars, they operate much
like a motorcycle, ATV or snowmobile
— except like every other boat, there’s
no brake.
With its shallow draft, a PWC can
go anywhere a regular boat does and
then some. An internal pump forces
water through a steerable jet nozzle
to drive a PWC forward (jet drive),
so no shaft or propeller sticks down
into the water as other types of
drives do. A PWC is incredibly
maneuverable when the throttle is
engaged, but avoid weedy areas that
can clog the water intake, impeding
forward motion.
Best of all, our PWC tows like a
dream behind most family-style cars
without any special or heavy duty
tow set up. What’s more, it slips into
and out of the water with ease at the
public launches available to all
boaters on most lakes and rivers. And
when we return home, the compact
size of our PWC and trailer combo
make it convenient to store in our
garage, beside the house or in the
backyard. One summer, we even
rented an outside parking spot at
a nearby storage compound.
The freedom of trailering a
PWC lets us embark on a new
adventure most summer
Saturdays, discovering new
lakes or rivers on our one-
day getaways. Fortunately,
Canada offers countless opportuni-
