Yamaha

Yamaha's boat division builds around an absence: there is no propeller. Its runabouts carry the company's own 1.8-litre marine engines inboard, usually in pairs, each spinning an impeller inside a tunnel in the hull — jet drives, the same idea as the company's WaveRunners scaled up to a twenty-one or twenty-seven-foot family boat. The consequences stack up fast. Draft is measured in inches, so the sandbar and the shallow cove are the boat's home water rather than its hazard. There is no lower unit to service, no outdrive bellows to fail, and winter layup is simpler than anything with gears under the waterline. And nothing sharp spins near a swimmer, a rope or a rider — the argument that made jet boats the default tow platform for a certain kind of careful family.

The bill for all of that is written in the water. A jet steers only under thrust, so off-throttle the helm goes vague and docking in reverse is an acquired skill the forums teach with diagrams. The pumps that make the boat safe also aerate what it leaves behind: the surf wake comes out smaller and washier than a v-drive's, which is why Yamaha sells the WakeBooster scoop and why the jet-boat forums' honest consensus is that a ballasted inboard out-waves them every time. And the same shallows the boat invites you into feed sticks and gravel straight to the impellers. The safest platform in the sport tows the weakest wave in it; both facts are load-bearing, and which one wins depends entirely on who is in the water behind you.

Buy a Yamaha if the mission is tubing, skiing, shallow-water days and easy ownership, and the surfer in the family is patient or absent. Buy a v-drive if the wave is the whole point, and accept the prop, the draft and the outdrive bills that come with it. Both tribes are shelved together on the wake and ski boats under $100k, and the wider motor fleet on the powerboat shelf.

Sources: BoatTEST 212 Limited S captain's report; boats.com on the Yamaha WakeBooster; JetBoaters.net owner threads on jet handling and surf wave quality.