Colorado River, “and by the time the current got done, when I fired it up, I didn’t see that we’d drifted onto a sandbar. The sound wasn’t pretty.”

Ugly noise was just one consequence:

The other was a $4,200 repair bill at the local MerCruiser hop shop.

There are other considerations. “A lot of my customers, especially the ones with kids, want never to have to worry about turning on the key to their boat,” says John West, owner of Ultra Custom Boats, the performance industry’s leading seller of jet-driven runabouts. “That’s a huge consideration for the family-oriented pleasure boater.”

Shallow-water superiority and prop-free boating are two tangible upsides. Less empirical and more emotional is the unique feel of driving a jet that’s been set up by someone who knows what they’re doing, a sensation that many lifelong pump enthusiasts cherish. Aside from hammering hard off the line, a trait that is exploited with foot-pedal installations in most jets rather than the 10-dominant hand throttle, a jetboat is fun to drive.

When is the last time you hearti of anyone blowing up their stock jet drive with 500 or 600 horsepower? That question was recently raised on the jetboat message boards at www.diabservis.com, where hundreds of jet- driven enthusiasts posted notices last month and is plainly a jab at the Bravo’s dubious record for reliability under hard power loads. The point is valid; here’s another one: Make enough power, and you can make serious speed in front of a jet drive.

Take Keith Zellmer’s hard-running unblown tunnel The Biz, for example. One of the country’s fastest pump machines, Zellmer’s jet-driven ride owns the International Hot Boat Association and National Jet Boat Association records at 133 mph.

On the recreational side, popular rivers are loaded with blown Eliminator Daytonas, California Performance, Ultra Shadows,

which was once more expensive.

Today, the 454-powered jet runs about $1,000 more than the same 350 Chevy- powered stern drive. They run about the same top-end speed.

The jet-boat market leveled off more than a decade ago, and sales are consistent and relatively flat every year. Although they don’t release sales figures, Marine Power, the industry’s leading volume distributor of jet-driven powering packages, agreed with our estimate of 200-250 new jet-drive installations per year.

Manne Power, which distributes American Turbine and Dominator drives (Dominator owns American Turbine), offers five powering packages to go along with two basic versions of the jet drive: the standard installation and the setback version. The 340- horse 454, 454 Premium (390 hp), 502 (415 hp), 486 or 8.1 L (375 hp) and the 8.1 LP (425 hp) form their lineup.

There’s roughly a $1 ,200-$1 ,600 difference between the base big block and the Premium 454, and the jump from base to 496 is about $4,200.

Interestingly, our tests attracted six pure family machines—not a true hot rod (as in tunnel boat) in the bunch.

They were all stockers, in fact, except one. Commander’s 21-foot Conquest hard- decker came to play and kindled the river- jet spirit that is at the core of the sport with a very effectively warmed-up setup that was the fastest boat of our meet, at 62.4 mph. The Commander’s premium- level, Marine Power Premium 390-horse 454 worked in tandem with a cleaned-up Dominator drive with a matched shoe and ride plate. In fact, Carrera’s 205 Elite and Advantage’s 20.5 Classic bowriders are proven family pleasers, and they renewed their reputation at our jet gathering. Ultra showed oft the smooth lines of their 21-foot Stealth and the value-intensive 21-foot Lightning subset XS, and Shockwave followed up with their usual smooth workmanship in a 21-foot Skier.

Six boats...a disappointing turnout? At first blush, maybe. On closer examination...absolutely not. Between Ultra/Lightning and the remaining four participants, more than 90% of the performance custom market was represented.

That’s the big picture. The following reports offer a closer look.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY FERNANDO ESCOVAR (WWW.FOTOGRAPHER.COM) AND ERIK ANDERSON

J etboats rule: That’s the sentiment of thousands of family performance boaters, especially in the West, where relatively shallow rivers make great sun- drenched weekend getaways. Opting for a prop-driven hot boat just isn’t a realistic option, given the fickle depths, rocky bottoms and unseen, waist-level sandbars just waiting to reduce props and outdrives to mangled junk. It doesn’t take much. “I turned around to retrieve a friend’s hat that blew off,” recalls Dave Johnson, owner of a 22-foot Nordic I/O that runs up and down the famed Parker Strip section of the

Advantage Banshees and other popular performance hulls that run spectacularly hard on the little and the big ends.

And don’t forget about the rooster tail.

There are few aftermarket products in the performance-boating industry that are so effective as to unequivocally belong on every single one of their application: the Place Diverter is one. Its primary value, of course, is as a hydraulic, push-button trim system that improves planing and rough-water ride and adds speed by reducing drag. Trim your Diverter up enough, and you’ll shoot a powerful cascade of water through your nozzle, 100 or more feet behind your boat—an exercise that does nothing but diminish your efficiency, but which most of us who have owned jets find, on occasion, absolutely irresistible.

Fun doesn’t always necessarily mean fast. Of the six jetboats profiled in this up- close look at the 2001 state of the jetboat nation, five peaked at 58 miles an hour or less. And that’s one of the innate criticisms of the jet drive: There are pump enthusiasts who will argue otherwise until they’re blue, but outdrives are more efficient. Period.

Stem drives cruise more efficiently. They go faster under equal power. They use less fuel. They require less driver input at extreme low rpm and sometimes elsewhere.

“All of that may be true,” says West, who sells many more outdrives than jets. “But which is more fun to drive at 55 miles an hour?”

Lower initial cost, which drew many boaters into the sport who otherwise couldn’t afford it, was once a.factor in jet-boating popularity. No longer. Six years ago, it cost a manufacturer approximately $4,200 for a complete, popular big-block jet-driven train. Today’s equivalent costs $9,300, and the cost of the pump has risen nearly threefold—a trend that has closed the gap on the small-block-powered outdrive package,