Dan Neil idled through a no-wake zone near Holden Beach, N.C., on his way to the fuel dock. A man in a sportfishing boat yelled across the water. He wanted to know what Neil paid for that thing. The sticker answer is $32,499, with a trailer. That makes Yamaha's CrossWave the most expensive production jet ski on the market.
Neil, the Journal's car critic, borrowed the CrossWave to find out whether a jet ski can be more than a toy. Yamaha calls it the first sports-utility personal watercraft. It's nearly 13 feet long, 5 feet 7 inches wide, and weighs more than 1,500 pounds with fluids. That makes it the largest and heaviest jet ski you can buy. It has a faux-teak deck you can walk around, rod holders on tracks and an icebox behind the seat. Yamaha brought two. Minutes after the first one left the ramp, it quit. Neil traced the trouble to the electrics. He kept flipping the kill switch, and each time the engine ran for a few seconds. It took 20 restarts to get back to the dock.
The $5,000 part that was missing
The second unit ran. Neil put his daughter Roz, 19, in charge of fishing and headed up a canal lined with docks. Here's the catch for anglers. A jet ski circles if you let go of the bars, and the intake can clog with grass and sand if you idle in neutral. So you can't just drift and fish. The answer is an optional trolling motor on the bow, about $5,000 all in. Theirs didn't have one. Without it, Neil writes, CrossWave owners shouldn't go near the shallows. At this price, he thinks Yamaha should include it.
Offshore was no kinder. In one-foot seas the hull pounded over every crest. Top speed is 55 mph, which Neil says is nowhere near the fastest jet ski out there. With 25 miles still to go, he turned for shore. He calls the CrossWave a big, wild machine that rides “like a plane crash that lasts all day.” There's no shade and no room for a canopy. Standing to fish is a day of core exercises on a wobble ball. Roz said she'd rather have a regular fishing boat.
Our read
This is a Cash Flow · M5 story, and it's about the sticker that isn't the price. The CrossWave is $32,499 with a trailer. The one thing it needs to do its job is about $5,000 more. Then come the fuel, the insurance, the slip or the garage space, and the truck to tow it. A boat is the classic case. People price the hull and pay for the lifestyle. The day it quits at the ramp, it still costs money while it sits.
The thing in your own plan this story touches is the fun-money line, the one that pays for the toy you've been eyeing. This week, write down the sticker. Then add the add-on it needs to be useful, the trailer, a year of insurance and a year of storage. For the CrossWave, the sticker plus the trolling motor alone comes to about $37,500. That's closer to the real number. Then rent one for a day before you sign. Neil's test day did that job for him, and his daughter still wanted the plain boat. If a big purchase like this is on your list, bring the full number to your next review and we'll fit it to the plan.