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If you’re like
me, you can still remember that unbridled feeling of freedom when you
finally made it down a triple-black-diamond ski slope without falling
or first sat mouth agape in the front car of a roller coaster as it took
its initial drop into free fall. Rating high marks on my own personal
excite-o-meter, and coming in somewhere between all of the above and hanging
ten off the edge of a surfboard on the mother of all waves, is driving
the Speedster 200, Sea-Doo’s latest addition to its Sport Boat line.
I laid the groundwork
for breaking the 55-plus-mph, face-flapping barrier in a 20-foot boat
at this year’s Miami International Boat Show, where I met up with
Jay Wadzinski, Bombardier’s director of North American sales. In
case you didn’t know it, the Sea-Doo line of Sport Boats, which numbers
11, is brought to you by Bombardier, whose other products include Ski-Doo
snowmobiles, ATVs, Johnson and Evinrude outboards, and those shiny new
subway cars rumbling beneath the streets of New York City and other metropolitan
areas.
“Ken, I know you’re
used to driving around all those big cruising and sportfishing boats,
but how about trying out one of these babies?” Wadzinski asked me.
I read a hint of challenge in his voice as he leaned against the flashy
red and white Speedster on display in the convention center, sensing my
impending acquiescence. “Come on,” he began as he opened up
the aft engine cover, revealing the twin powerplants, a pair of 155-hp,
three-cylinder Rotax 4-TEC four-stroke engines displacing 1,498 cc each.
There was also a closed cooling system and axial-flow, single-stage jet
pumps with stainless steel, progressive-pitch impellers... He paused just
long enough to catch me admiring the neat configuration and engineering
of the engine package. “Slide the throttles to 7300 rpm, and I bet
you hit 55 mph,” he said confidently.
I left the display area
knowing I could fit something like this in my upcoming schedule. Sure
enough, another boat test brought me back to South Florida a week later
and, after spending a day driving around a cushy 68-footer, I was on my
way up from Fort Lauderdale the next morning to Bombardier’s Grant,
Florida, testing location.
Before I boarded this
plucky little speedboat, Wadzinski gave me some background information.
“While we wanted the 200, like all our Sport Boats, to have a performance
edge, there was also a lifestyle that had to be considered so that we
could target several areas of the consumer market,” he said, referring
not to just the hot-dogging, wake-boarding, and ski enthusiasts, but to
anyone with a larger vessel looking for a different spin on a tender.
Next page >
Part
2: The Speedster virtually
ignored the conditions and handled the water with aplomb. > Page 1, 2,
3, 4
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