Maybe You Don't Need 325 Horsepower to Have Fun on the Water

Car and Driver

12 hours ago

Anyone who bought a powersports toy circa 2020 to 2022 can tell you it was a seller's market. Supply chain meltdowns, combined with low interest rates and unprecedented demand, meant that pretty much any boat, ATV, side-by-side, RV, or personal watercraft practically sold itself, often at full price or more. Those days are over. Now the situation is inverted, because a lot of people who bought recreational machines during the pandemic used their new toys a few times and then realized they'd overestimated their appetite for adrenaline. And, as a habitual Marketplace browser, I notice that the lowest usage tends to correlate to the highest horsepower. More than a few would-be speed junkies bring home a machine like Sea-Doo's 325-hp supercharged RXP-X only to find that hitting 60 mph in 3.4 seconds is not necessarily a feat you want to repeat all day long.
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The 170-hp GTI SE does about 55 mph, which is often faster than the traffic is moving out on Route 1 in the Keys.
Sea-Doo, for its part, has concentrated on revamping the more accessible machines in its lineup over the past few years. The second-generation Spark—Sea-Doo's affordable rec lite personal watercraft—debuted for 2024. The bigger GTI models were redesigned for 2021, the same year that Sea-Doo's wild pontoon boat, the Switch, hit the market. It's been a while since I rode a Sea-Doo, and I've never tried a Switch, so I headed down to Florida to see what's new. These kinds of drive events are common, both for cars and powersports machines, but the twist here is that my wife and kids came along, too. Because it turns out that 14-year-olds can ride personal watercraft in Florida, a revelation that was greeted with a hearty "Let's goooo!" by my 14-year-old son, Rhys. There would be no RXP-X on the agenda, because I'm not sure even my frontal lobe is fully formed enough for that.
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I wasn't too worried about putting Rhys on a Sea-Doo, even though the 170-hp GTI SE can hit about 55 mph. He got his boater's license in North Carolina (we all passed the test for the temporary Florida-specific one) and he's well versed in ATVs and the like. But I still peppered him with PWC-specific dad advice long before we arrived at our ride spot on Florida Bay, a little north of Islamorada: Don't hammer the throttle away from the dock, don't even touch the throttle if anyone's in the water behind you, always check behind you before turning, and stay away from whoever else is riding. Other than that? Go rip it.
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Here's where dry-sump oiling becomes important.
We began with a family tour to Toilet Seat Cut, which, as you'd expect, is a channel bordered by lavishly decorated toilet seats mounted on poles sunk in the shallows. Besides exuding high-level Florida Keys eccentricity, the forest of toilet seats does a great job delineating the narrow channel—if you don't know where you're going, it's easy to miss a cut on the bay side of the Keys. Fortunately, if an errant dad leads everyone far astray from the deep water, backtracking is quick on a Sea-Doo. The Spark, with 90 horsepower, can hit about 45 mph, which feels plenty fast until you ride the GTI SE and find there's more to be had. I can honestly say that never did I wish for more horsepower.
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That is how you mark a channel, Florida Keys style.
At least, not on the personal watercraft—the Switch might be a different story. The 21-foot Switch was powered by a 230-hp supercharged 1.6-liter three-cylinder, and it was pretty quick for what is essentially a floating living room. I saw 40 mph on the speedometer, but another 95 horses wouldn't hurt it. The Switch is unique among pontoon boats in that it uses Sea-Doo running gear, complete with a jet drive and handlebars. The handlebars make it crazy maneuverable around the dock (you can spin the boat on its axis by bumping between forward and reverse with the bars fully cranked), but at speed, the pontoon hull would rather track straight ahead than dig into turns. Nonetheless, I was able to get the kids whipping outside the wake during a tubing session, launching them duly skyward when we came back around to the chop. Pontoons are generally thought of as lake boats, but the Switch had no problem with the wind-whipped bay when we took a 12-mile trip to Gilbert's in Key Largo.
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What, you kids think this tube is flip-proof?
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The Switch's 230 hp proves enough for an enervating ride.
We also spent a lot of time going nowhere in particular. The Spark is perfect for that, particularly the Trixx version ($9199 for the single-seater), which can angle its thrust nozzle extra far up and down. Why would you want to do that? Two words: water wheelies. And also reverse donuts. The Trixx has what looks like a sprinter's starter blocks at the rear of the hull, and you wonder what they're for until you goose it in Trixx mode with the trim set all the way toward bow high. Most PWCs climb a little bit out of the water before the impeller sucks air, self-regulating a relatively flat running attitude. Not the Trixxx—you can stand on those blocks and ride it till it's almost vertical, at which point it gets challenging to balance. Toppling over sideways, you can pin the throttle and ride out of it, but going over backwards (a distinct possibility) occasions a respawn after you inevitably yank the lanyard and kill the engine. It's stupid fun, as is ripping reverse donuts, which causes water to spray out from under the bow in a geyser. I wondered how the Rotax engine survives these antics, and the answer is that the Spark (and all Sea-Doos) uses a dry-sump oiling system to keep everything properly lubed even when it's being tossed vertical or upside down. Race-car stuff—nice.
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When we had an actual destination in mind, like heading down to Islamorada to buy bait, the GTI SEs were the ride of choice. The hulls are longer and heavier, and the GTI is more refined than the rambunctious Spark. The newer GTIs don't look radically different than their pre-2021 predecessors, but there were changes aplenty. The Rotax's output rose from 155 to 170 horsepower, dropping the claimed 0-to-50-mph time from 6.6 seconds to 5.2 seconds. There's way more onboard storage, including a waterproof phone compartment. And Sea-Doo worked to lower the center of gravity, mounting the engine deeper in the hull and lowering the seat height.
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As with a car, lowering the CG produces better handling, and the GTI feels like you could ride it to Cuba and be ready for a night out in Havana when you get there. Rhys, for his part, took to cruising aimlessly around the bay and listening to music on the onboard audio system. When I asked him what he thought, he said, "I can't get enough of these things." I get it. This was his first taste of motorized freedom, two years before he'll be able to drive a car.
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Unlike many a pandemic purchaser, I know that if I owned a Sea-Doo or two, they'd get plenty of use, especially with Kid 2 about to age into the 14-year-old rider demographic (I've been informed by both lads that 14 is also the legal PWC operator age in North Carolina, where we live).
Fortunately for my bank account, I have nowhere to dock a Sea-Doo, and having to visit a boat ramp every time diminishes spontaneous rides, which are the best kind. But if I ever do get one, I might need to drag it down to the Keys. Because we completed one more project on our final ride, and someday I want to go see how the clearcoat is holding up on the Dyer family addition to Toilet Seat Cut.
Ezra Dyer
Senior Editor
Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.