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picking up my sx190 Thursday. Any advice for a 1st time jet owner would be helpful. Taking boat out for the 1st time sat. It's 2015 (if that matters. Wondering how loud t it will be?
Practice slow speed steering ... and higher speed steering. Follow break-in instructions from the dealer. I agree with @SCSTWG about going with a small group and practicing. You may want to consider Thrust Vectors from @JetBoatPilot to aid in slow speed steering (they have a video online showing you the difference - I noticed it right away when I installed mine).
Congrats @Par190sx on the new boat. One bit of advice around the docks, "never approach an object at a speed greater that you're willing to hit it at". There's a learning curve with jet boats so go slow and practice.
@Par190sx Welcome. All Jet boat manufacturers strive to make their boat quieter. I think you will be pleasantly surprised... Also, there are some forums within Jetboaters.net that have videos of tips for handling jet boats. Take time to look them over and as @itsdgm said, take it slow and practice...
Welcome, @Par190sx ! Best advice I have for you is to remain active with this board! A wealth of information here, good folks and good fun. It is too much to keep up with at all times, but if you at least come by and add a post when you can, you will find that you can learn a great deal from the folks here. Hope yesterday's outing was a good one.
When me, Will and my family went for my test drive, Will was pretty adamant that I do everything. I've been around inboards and stern drives all my life, but anytime you read about jet boats someone writes a horror story.
I backed off the trailer, picked up everyone at the dock, drove through a 3/4 mile wake zone, went out in the bay, took high and low speed sweepers, topped her out, went back to the dock and dropped everyone and put her on the trailer...first try. I'm not sure how much were the Thrust Vectors, but it went much better than expected. To be honest, a couple of Dolphins came to play while going out through the wake zone and during that time I realized just how relaxed the handling was as I had time too look at and enjoy them with my family.
My advice? These boats are just big jet skis so they are great at speed, but are going to be much less so going slow. Buy and install the Thrust Vectors even if the handling seems ok. They are a very small price to pay for the kind of confidence they give.