Rec and Sports

A Note on the History of the Personal Watercraft

Cruising the waters on your personal watercraft is a great experience. The ride alone is a great thrill. But have you ever wondered how the personal watercraft came to be? Here’s a quick look at the history of the personal watercraft.

The concept was initially started by the Bombardier family in the late sixties. They have this notion of transforming their patented Ski-Doo snowmobile into something that could traverse the waters, much a like a water scooter. Being a family who spent their summers on and around the lakes of the Laurentian region of Quebec, the Bombardier household would naturally have a penchant for water sports.

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 save the project. He made a list of changes that should be made and incorporating rubber components and even suggested the idea of waterproofing the body. Bombardier failed to act on Jacobsens suggestions and the project was shelved.

Jacobsen, determined to finished what he started, bought the rights of the patent and presented the design to Kawasaki in 1971. With some tweaks of the initial design by Jacobsen, Kawasaki was able to create a better, more practical variant of the personal watercraft. In 1973, Kawasaki introduced the Jet Ski, the first commercial personal watercraft. Today, the term Jet Ski means all types of water crafts, even though Kawasaki Motors is the registered owner of the trademark.

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