Watercraft

With summer fast approaching, outdoor enthusiasts will soon launch thousands of boats and personal watercraft into rivers, lakes and the ocean, unleashing a huge pulse of smog-forming exhaust into California skies. Manufacturers post booming sales and produce even more permutations of vessels -- personal watercraft, kayaks, ski boats and pontoon party barges, to name a few.

Holding a nationally televised personal watercraft competition in a river in the middle of August seems like a natural. Except when you're talking about the normally dry Santa Ana River, where summertime recreation is usually limited to the bike and horse trails lining its banks. But on Friday, a dramatic metamorphosis of the riverbed began to take place.

There was the rider who performed the "air chair"--a stunt in which a daredevil, towed by a motorized water ski, sits in a chair bolted to a hydrofoil and loops through the air. Other skiers did headstands and went backward and some even went completely underwater, watercraft and all. It was just another day at Jet Jam '96 next to the Pond, where 4,400 people Friday watched the wacky water antics and other examples of "extreme" sports such as "reverse bungee jumping" and rock climbing.

The state's recreational boating industry is irate about a legislative proposal to ban the use of high-polluting outboard motors on more than 100 lakes and reservoirs throughout California. The impact of the ban, the industry says, would cost it $800 million annually in sales. The proposal, contained in Assembly Bill 2439, prohibits the use of high-polluting, two-stroke engines on lakes and reservoirs that supply drinking water.

They're called "personal watercraft" by the industry, but that moniker strikes me as non-descriptive. Literally, it means somebody's own boat and could cover anything from a rubber raft to a world-class yacht. Most boaters like myself just call them "jet skis," but Jet Ski is a brand name and rival manufacturers object. Thus the bland name PWC. More accurately, they could be called water scooters. They do resemble a cross between a trail bike and a classic Vespa.

So it's Labor Day and summer's almost over. That means the gnats soon will be coming off the water. Those swarming, buzzing, annoying water gnats. Good riddance. Most people just refer to these pests by their common name, "jet skis." But since Jet Ski is a brand name, the boat-manufacturing industry has concocted a nondescript euphemism--"personal watercraft," or PWC.

When it comes to big discretionary items, such as vacation homes, recreational vehicles and watercraft, financial planners often counsel that it's much better to rent than to buy. That's because you incur costs only when you use it, and you're likely to use these things so infrequently that buying simply "doesn't pencil out." Phil and Kristi Berlioz of Valencia beg to differ. They bought a half-interest in a speedboat 11 years ago for water-skiing.

The sun was on the students' side. Blinding, blazing and brutal to the fair-skinned, the beams of sunlight helped propel the small boat 5 to 7 mph around Corona Lake in Riverside County. Standing along the shoreline, sweaty and thirsty, the nine students cheered for the skipper, a classmate who rode the solar-paneled boat through the calm water during a test run Wednesday.

Regarding "Up in Smoke" [June 14]: Modern personal watercraft are among the cleanest and quietest motorized boats on the water today. Every new PWC sold in California complies with current standards and in some instances already meets the 2008 model year emissions standards set by the California Air Resources Board. Maureen Healey Executive director, Personal Watercraft Industry Assn.

When warm weather brings a wondrous mix of vessels to Orange County's coast, let's hope they all find a way to get along--and safely. Harbor Patrol Sgt. Ron Peoples surprised me when I asked if it is just a few who are unsafe on the water: "Unfortunately, it's the majority who seem to be uneducated about boating safety," he said. One problem hard to ignore is the personal watercraft, the biggest-selling boats in California.