Jetboating

holy tits, some of that stuff was insaneee

jetboats in rivers = awesomeness

flat bottom aluminum boat + 65 hp outboard w/ jet-drive = 25 mph upriver in 8 inches of water
quite amazing if you ask me

That was fucking absurd.

wow. all i can say is wow

Coming if I was coming that close to the rocks I would have shit my pants so hard

Wow Amazing Now I wanna try haha

i'm skeptical. How is his hull not cracked to hell?

I don't know, I'm sure it has cracked though..
They also did a complete 360 haha

Holy titballs.  I would never drive a boat that close to rocks, and especially not that fucking fast, holy shit.

meh, you can do that in an inboard, just not quite as tightly. there's no way though that they're driving that boat down that rive.r it'd be destroyed in the first 30 seconds....that has to be shopped/whatever..can .any experts confirm?

I had a seadoo 14ft jet boat for 2 years, and my cousin has a yamaha engine on his river boat for just the reason of shallow depth.

This is like the model Seadoo I had. It only had 135hp, and if you loaded the boat (say brought 4 friends out, beer, and gas), and want to go tubing. It could be just smidge faster. Ultimately I sold the boat because I went through TWO engines in 2 summers. After a while of having the "small speedy boat" all I did was boat around looking for waves. The quick turning of these jet boats makes us the most reckless boaters out there for sure. We think we can turn in no time and shit.

meh, could have been closer

Have you never heard of a jetboat? driving up rivers is what they were designed to do. They were pretty much designed by a guy called Bill Hamilton in NZ. They can operate in something stupidly shallow like 10cm I think. I'm pretty sure you could not do that in a boat with an inboard motor. Jets don't have a rudder and prop to get in the way

But to answer your question, that is real. It's the shotover jet operating near Queenstown.

http://www.shotoverjet.com

And it's sick for sure! If anyone is ever in queenstown its heaps of fun

uhh idk if it exists but i think they should totally take these boats and do on water rallying.... itd be sick

that is a great idea, they probably do that already. If they televised THAT, then I would have a reason to watch TV.

yea 10cm is right, ive been on that specific one a couple of times and its mad fun, if anyone comes down here to NZ you have to do this. especially the middle of winter haha, absolutly freezing. plus the river is lowest at that point, in someplaces you can feel the bost scrap the river bottom, but they do stop if the river gets too low. I have a friend who used to drive these and he said it was the best job he'd ever had.

they do that too!
http://www.jetpro.co.nz/

Yes, I've heard of jetboats. Scope a few of my pics - you could probably say that I've been around the river a time or two.

the boat you have is probably made out of fiberglass, and has probably some sort of v-hull configuration. like most other boats. fiberglass is a great material because its pretty light, can be molded into all kinds of great shapes that work well for pushing water away, and when coated properly, can withstand a very long life of being run through water without any deterioration. the hull shape (v) works great for recreational boating and shit. it handles chop pretty well, but still provides good handling both at high and low speed. if you drove your boat up a river, it would die. the prop would be shredded by rocks, the hull would be torn to shreds (also by rocks) and it would probably just sit there and go nowhere because its draft is deeper than the water. your boat is probably powered by an outboard prop motor, an inboard prop motor, or an I/O (combo of both)


the boat in the video is made out of fucking aluminum (or stainless steel) that is possibly between 3/4 and 1/2 inches thick. when you scrape aluminum against rocks and shit, it may scratch or dent, but it really wont get too fucked up. its also an extremely easy material to patch if it does get fucked up. the boat in the video definately has a totally flat-bottom hull. meaning there is no "v" shape, or any other kind of concave bullshit. this makes it handle like all kinds of fucking bad shit, and its very susceptable to rough water, but the flat bottom greatly increases the amount of water it displaces, and minimizes the boats draft, allowing it to operate in shallow water (10cm, like that other guy said) this flat-bottom hull shape also allows it displace the energy from hitting bad things (rocks) so it can bounce off even easier, with even less damage. it has a hamilton propulsion system. which is sorta like a ducted fan jet, but for underwater. it uses a combination of impellors and tube to suck water through an intake and then shoot it out the other side. making it more maneuverable (sorta)


you would want to "beat the shit out of the sides of your hull" because its designed for it. its also fucking awesome.

There was about 20 times where they should have crashed into the rocks. Unreal.

yes i was aware of this, but i just think doing it rally style on a actual river would be much more legit, like having a co-driver and everything, plus the rocks make it much more legit

you are correct. all of our boats are fiberglass vhull ski boats. a corvette inboard w race motor, four hydrodynes one with twin 250 Mercury's, one with 2 200 Mercury's, and two with single 225 Merc's. these boats go up and down rivers all summer long. primarily the mississippi & the rock river. that stream in the video isn't even a real river ;)

nevermind. i see it was posted above. i'll be damned.

In NZ that is a real river haha. It seems like you're using your boats on waay bigger rivers though.

They aren't actually bashing into anything, it's just very close. The Shotover is marketed as a thrill ride.

Those particular boats have twin V8 engines coupled to twin jet units, so they're pretty powerful. These boats can go around 80kph, race boats are faster. Not too sure who makes the hull, but the fitouts are done in Queenstown I think. I supply parts to the company that does the maintainence on these boats. The hulls aren't flat either, they've got a shallow v shape. Aluminum is used so that it can be easily repaired as well as taking more of a hammering than fiberglass.

And back to the racing, there is a jet marathon race that is more of a rally format

Oh man these things are soo fun, Ive gotten to ride in one in the niagara river. They operate tours outta there into the rapids its pretty badass. Granted thats so fucking close to the sides.

Oh my. It must be really hard to ski on such a small little stream/river. lol.