Jet skis are such handy things to have around a yacht, either for a little offshore fun, or as mini-tenders to reach land with. Even the expensive ones, though, look like they were designed by people with their caps on backwards, who might say things like "yo" and "gnarly," and who probably don't put their little finger up when they drink tea, the savages.
Some are able to look past this. Others might enjoy the VQ11 from Vanquish Yachts, which might staunch any eye-bleeding caused by your average low-brow, lime-green plastic Kawasaki design.
For here is a pretty trifle designed around a much more dignified and yachty hull shape, which can even be specified with a pleasingly planky decking to bring out the best in your boat shoes. It's larger than most personal watercraft, at 11 ft (3.32 m) long and 5.28 ft (1.6 m) wide, but its 170-horsepower motor is good for a top speed of 58 mph (93 km/h), and it turns snappily enough to shower the lower decks on your main vessel with spray if you find yourself feeling young at heart.
The idea is that you'd specify it to look like a smaller version of your yacht – but the dirty secret here is that the VQ11 is built on a SeaDoo engine rather than anything more exotic. Fear not, it's sure to be prohibitively expensive anyway – its bigger brother the VQ16, a similar machine but large enough to seat five, starts at around US$100,000. So SeaDoo engine or no, you'll not be mistaken for a commoner as you waft this thing up to a pier.
Vanquish seems unable to sum up the experience of riding the VQ11 in its own words, so instead provides the following (uncredited) quote from Nikos Kazantzakis's Zorba the Greek: "I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else."
Well, nothing else except a roaring jet ski drowning out the sound of the sea, perhaps. Either way, I think there's something in that for all of us.
Source: Vanquish Yachts
