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Words and Culture

The media

32 titles that recorded the sport, from a Yamaha dealer newsletter and an Arizona newspaper that both ran from 1964 to the tapes of the 1983 nationals, in 5 languages, with where each is catalogued and what this site may do with it. Most may only be named and linked. A few may be quoted. Several have a rights holder who has not been asked, and those are named and nothing more.


The four positions

Link only (19)
Named and linked; not quoted beyond the fact of a dated line.
Quotable (2)
Public domain, a free licence or a press release: may be quoted under the 300-character cap with attribution.
Permission needed (10)
A rights holder exists and has not been asked. Named, not linked, not quoted.
Do not use (1)
An uploader's copy with no rights, or a misidentification. Named so a reader knows why it is not cited; never linked.

Magazines (11)

The titles that covered the sport month by month, and where their issues are catalogued.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
Hot Water Sports Magazine (HWSM) Edge, Tokyo; distributed by Neko Publishing to No. 108, then Zokei-sha 2002 to present; ja Free-at-dealers Japanese watercraft magazine; its site carries Japanese race reports, including the vintage Legend Heat. The one Japanese title with a live site the research could read; it is the source for the Legend Heat sightings in the glossary. Gaps: The National Diet Library record marks the run suspended at No. 201 while the publisher's site carried No. 277 in September 2026; the catalogue entry is presumed stale. NDL record catalogue: ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp hwsm.jp Link only Publisher copyright; the site is live and the print run catalogued. Confirmed
Jet Dream (ジェットドリーム) Vol 1, summer 1987, to Vol 91, June 1996; ja Japanese personal watercraft monthly of the boom years; in no project document until the September 2026 research. Found in the National Diet Library catalogue on 2026-09-17. On Yahoo Auctions the title collides with a dealer and product keyword; the research notes the category restriction that separates them. NDL Z7-2013; subtitle Marine motor jet sports magazine catalogue: ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp Link only Publisher copyright; the run is held by the National Diet Library, not read. Confirmed
Jet pulsion 2007 to 2017, bimonthly; fr French personal watercraft bimonthly, competition-first at launch; after the vintage era but a source for the French scene. Catalogued at the Bibliotheque nationale de France; not read. ISSN 1955-9887 catalogue: catalogue.bnf.fr Link only Publisher copyright; catalogued in Paris under its own ISSN, not read. Confirmed
Jet Skier, renamed Jet Sports in 1992 International Jet Sports Boating Association, published for it by a Tustin, California, communications firm from 1992 by 1989 (trademark filed 24 July 1989) to early 2004; possibly from 1984 on seller listings only; en IJSBA's own member magazine: from 2000 a members-only bimonthly of the AWA and IJSBA, not sold on newsstands. Its web edition on ijsba.com showed July/August 2003 as the current issue into December 2003 and answered 404 from February 2004. The start is contested: auction listing titles show a 1984 World Finals edition and 1986, 1987 and 1989 issues, but a full-text search of 550 issues of Cycle News from 1982 to 1992 never prints the title as a publication, so the earliest dated primary is the 1989 trademark filing and 1984 to 1988 rest on seller titles only. The end, May 2004, rests on a Hungarian federation bulletin of 2006, corroborated in substance by ijsba.com's own captures. Gaps: Circulation figures that float in directory snippets are unsourced and not published. No issue is held or scanned anywhere reachable. Listed as a quarterly in the 1991 Encyclopedia of Associations; the 2000 Standard Periodical Directory records it as Jet Sports (Jet Skier); no ISSN found by any route no public page reached Link only IJSBA copyright presumed; no scanned issue exists on the Internet Archive or in Google Books. Contested
Motonautique magazine, later Motonautisme magazine The French motonautique federation April 1993 to January 2005; fr The French federation's organ, with jets in its subtitle from the rename. Catalogued at the Bibliotheque nationale de France; nothing French before 1993 surfaced, and a 1990 title called Jet Ski turned out to be a comics publisher. ISSN 1165-5747 (Motonautique magazine, to No. 12, July 1993); ISSN 1768-5745 (Motonautisme magazine, to No. 18, January 2005) catalogue: catalogue.bnf.fr Link only Publisher copyright; catalogued in Paris, not read. Confirmed
Personal Watercraft Illustrated Personal Watercraft Illustrated Inc, a Cycle News Inc title June 1987 to 1 January 2010; en Race reports, IJSBA national tour results, points standings, model tests and shootouts, 1987 to 2010; a born-digital article archive from 1996 survives in the Wayback Machine. PWI was an independent Cycle News Inc title from its 1 July 1987 charter subscription offer to its 2010 close, never IJSBA's own magazine: no capture of its site between 1996 and 2010 calls it an official publication of anything, and the only dated tie to a sanctioning body is an APBA Page department by January 2008 and an IJSBA Page by March 2010. One scanned issue (Vol 2 No 1, 1988) was uploaded to the Internet Archive in 2023 and stripped in 2026; its OCR is still queryable snippet by snippet. Gaps: No period staff photographer could be named after six searches; the credits question stays open. Every sentence calling PWI the official publication of IJSBA or APBA before 2008 is unpublishable, since no dated statement exists. not linked Permission needed Publisher copyright. The back issues and the intellectual property sit with a former editor, per a 2016 trade-press article; that person is the route to photography rights and has not been asked. Confirmed
Splash McMullen and Yee, then McMullen Argus (PriMedia), Placentia, California 1987 to about 1999; en Consumer and race coverage of the two-stroke boom; a monthly photo section called lastblast is reported from one 1994 issue. The trademark record gives a first use of 1 August 1987. The local paper of its home town never mentions it in three sampled issues. Single issues and lots surface on auction sites, which is where the 1992 issues seen were listed. Gaps: No scanned issue is held anywhere the research could reach. ISSN 0898-8951 (key title Splash (Placentia, Calif.)) catalogue: portal.issn.org, not linked Permission needed Publisher copyright; the title passed through two publishers and no rights desk was found. Confirmed
Wassersport-Magazin Nuremberg, Germany 1982 to 1993; de German magazine for motorboat, sailing, waterski and jet ski sport through the first European boom. Held by the German serials database; the only German-language title of the era with a catalogue record. A German title called Jetskifahrer, later Jetsport Magazin, is reported from one 1992 auction listing and is in neither the ZDB nor the DNB, so it is not a row here. Gaps: The ZDB record sits behind a bot check and was not re-read on 2026-09-30. ISSN 0175-0356; ZDB 1485871-X; Jet-Ski-Sport in its title catalogue: zdb-katalog.de Link only Publisher copyright; the run is recorded by the German serials database. Confirmed
Watercraft World Ehlert Publishing Group, Minnetonka, Minnesota 1993 to about 2009, preceded by Water Scooter from November 1987; en Consumer magazine of the personal watercraft market through the four-stroke changeover. The catalogue record names Water Scooter as the preceding title; its own record, read 2026-09-30, says it began in November 1987 and ceased in 1993, and Watercraft World starts at volume 8, number 1, December 1993. Issues from 1996 and 1997 surface on auction sites. ISSN 1073-3191; the preceding Water Scooter is ISSN 0899-9775 catalogue: lccn.loc.gov Link only Publisher copyright; no rights desk found. Confirmed
World Jet Sports Magazine World Jet Sports Magazine Sha, Tokyo, distributed by Denpa Jikkensha, later Denpa-sha May 1996 to Sep 1997 as sixteen interim issues, then print October 1997 to December 2018, then free digital; ja Japanese personal watercraft monthly covering domestic racing and the World Finals; issues 12 to 27 (November 1998 to December 1999) circulate on Yahoo Auctions Japan. The National Diet Library holds the complete run. The magazine began its numbering inside a radio-control hobby magazine of the same distributor. Gaps: The sixteen interim issues of 1996 to 1997 and the predecessor record Z7-B789 were not reached through the library's search on 2026-09-30; the linked record supports October 1997 to December 2018, 255 issues. NDL Z7-C49, complete; predecessor NDL Z7-B789 catalogue: ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp Link only Publisher copyright; the complete run is in the National Diet Library. Confirmed
Yate y Motonautica Barcelona March 1965 to January 1991, then Yate to 2012; es Spain's general boating monthly of the era; its reporters covered personal watercraft events per a Spanish boating site. Single-sourced: the claim that it covered the sport rests on one secondary site, and no catalogue record for the racing-era issues was reached. ca.wikipedia.org Link only Publisher copyright; no catalogue record for the racing-era issues was reached. Contested

Newspapers (3)

The papers of record for the World Finals town and the trade weekly that covered the racing when nobody else did.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
Cycle News Cycle News Inc, Long Beach then Costa Mesa, California 1965 to present; IJSBA coverage 1986 to 1999; en A motorcycle trade weekly that covered IJSBA racing through the whole boom: 44 issues from 1986 to 1999 with champion lists and race coverage, invisible to metadata search and found only through the Internet Archive's full-text index. The same publisher's paper as PWI, which is how the PWI ownership question was settled. A separate pass through 298 issues of 1987 to 1992 dated a Desert Classic, an indoor championship, the National Jet Ski Tour and the first APBA watercraft national title, each from one advert or brief. Gaps: Each of those dated facts is single-sourced to one advert or brief; only the National Jet Ski Tour gained an independent second source. archive.org Quotable Cycle News copyright; the Internet Archive hosts scans with OCR under an uploader declaration that is not a clearance. Quoted here only for the fact of a dated line, under the 300-character cap, with the issue date. Confirmed
Kingman Daily Miner Western News and Info, Kingman, Arizona 1970 to 2003 in the digitised run; en The Mohave County seat's paper, and the only digitised county paper covering the World Finals years the surviving tapes do not. How many years that is, this archive has not established. The title page confirms scans from 1970 and lists Lake Havasu City among its cities; whether it covered the racing is unconfirmed because search needs an account. Gaps: Coverage of the racing is presumed, not seen. no public page reached Link only Publisher copyright; scans behind a paid genealogy service's terms. Likely
Lake Havasu City Herald, then Today's Daily News, then Today's News-Herald River City Newspapers LLC, Lake Havasu City, Arizona (current holder) 1964 to 1994 as the Herald; 1994 to 1995 as the Daily Herald; 1992 to 1995 as Today's Daily News; from 1 September 1995 as Today's News-Herald; en The paper of record for the World Finals at Lake Havasu from 1982; presumed to cover every edition and confirmed for none, because no search could be run without an account. The masthead's founding date was contested between 1983 and 1995; the Library of Congress record settles the Today's News-Herald masthead at 1 September 1995 by merger, and the earlier titles carry the earlier years. Gaps: No World Finals story from this paper has been read; the coverage is presumed. LCCN sn93003661 (Herald), sn94004094 (Daily Herald, 1994 to 1995), sn93003793 (Today's Daily News), sn95060571 (Today's News-Herald) catalogue: loc.gov, not linked Permission needed Publisher copyright; the current holder was located but no permissions desk was found. Scans from 1996 to 2007 sit behind a paid genealogy service; the free Google News Archive route is dead. Confirmed

Newsletters (1)

Dealer and maker bulletins that carry the launch announcements.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
Marine Store News (マリンストアニュース), with Yamaha Boat and Yamaha Marine News Yamaha Motor, Japan 1964 to 2009 across the three mastheads; ja Yamaha's marine dealer newsletters; No. 052 of November 1986, under the Marine Store News masthead, announces the Marine Jet with the MJ-500T and MJ-500S, and No. 083 of April 1992, under Yamaha Marine News, lists the full 1992 line. No race coverage was found in the three issues read. Distinct from the English-language Yamaha News that the Model Reference section indexes; these are the Japanese dealer titles. Yamaha's own Digital Library, 192 issues: Yamaha Boat Vol. 1 to 43 (1964 to 1973), Marine Store News Vol. 1 to 56 (1977 to 1987), Yamaha Marine News Vol. 57 to 168 (1988 to 2009); the library is the publisher's site and is not linked from a permission-needed row not linked Permission needed Yamaha's terms for its Communication Plaza material are personal use only with redistribution prohibited; the Marine News run is presumed to follow. Confirmed

Books and annuals (2)

Factory handbooks and annuals.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
Jet Riding (ジェットライディング) Seibido Shuppan, Japan 1990 to 2001, an annual, twelve volumes in the National Diet Library; ja An annual with a model and parts catalogue for the Japanese market. Catalogued at the National Diet Library; not read. NDL, twelve annual volumes dated June or July 1990 to 2001; the linked record is the June 1991 volume catalogue: ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp Link only Publisher copyright; an annual catalogued in Tokyo, not read. Confirmed
Sea-Doo Racing Handbook, 1996 and 1998 editions Bombardier 1996 and 1998; en Factory racing handbooks; the 1998 edition carries the full period racing-number specification. Found through the Internet Archive's full-text index, not its metadata search. archive.org Link only Bombardier copyright; on the Internet Archive through a bulk manual scrape, not a clearance. Confirmed

Reports and rulebook serials (2)

Government and sanctioning-body documents catalogued as serials.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
Personal Watercraft Safety, NTSB Safety Study SS-98/01 National Transportation Safety Board, United States 1 May 1998; en The federal safety study the regulatory history will cite; it is what the sound and off-throttle-steering chapter turns on. Found through the Department of Transportation's ROSA P repository on 2026-09-20 after the regulatory pass could not confirm it. NTSB/SS-98/01, notation 7002 catalogue: rosap.ntl.bts.gov rosap.ntl.bts.gov Quotable A United States government work, public domain; the PDF carries a checksum on ROSA P. Confirmed
Rules for personal watercraft racing (APBA serial) American Power Boat Association catalogued from a 1989 issue; en The only pre-2022 personal watercraft rulebook found in any library catalogue. Not read; the catalogue record is the finding, and it sits beside the organisations directory's APBA row. Library of Congress, call number GV835.94 .A47a, LCCN 89662281 catalogue: lccn.loc.gov Link only APBA copyright. Confirmed

Tapes and telecasts (2)

What footage exists, who holds the rights, and why none of it is embedded here.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
ESPN and ESPN2 telecasts of the World Finals and tour rounds ESPN; licensing through the Disney studio licensing desk at least 1986, 1989, 1996 and 1999 World Finals, and 1990 and 1995 tour rounds, per uploader-credited tapes; en Broadcast coverage of the sport's biggest events, held in the ESPN library if the uploader credits are right. Every year on the list is inferred from a tape's title or an uploader's field, not from a viewed credit or a library record; the ESPN library is the one untried institutional route to the missing years. Gaps: No holding has been confirmed with the library itself. no public page reached Permission needed Proprietary, rights-managed; a named licensing desk exists and has never been asked. Likely
IJSBA World Finals VHS rips on a video-sharing playlist, 1983 to 2001 tapes of 1983 to 2001, uploaded in the 2010s and 2020s; en Six full tapes including the 1983 Coors / Style Auto National Jet Ski Championships and the 1984 Coors / OP World Finals at Lake Havasu, the earliest race footage located anywhere; the titles carry the period sponsor names as search keys. The tapes exist and were viewed for their titles; nothing from them is quoted, embedded or linked. Any broadcaster attribution on a tape is an uploader's field, not a viewed credit, and is not repeated here. Gaps: No tape of the 1993, 1994 or 1997 World Finals was found by any route. no public page reached Do not use The uploader holds no rights; broadcast copyright is presumed, and an uploader's open-source tag is not a clearance. Not linked. Confirmed

Archives and agencies (3)

Where the research found things, and on what terms.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
Getty Images editorial holdings, including the ITN archive Getty Images 1978 to present; en The only IJSBA-captioned agency images anywhere: a 1996 IJSBA Expert qualifier at Anaheim and a 1996 portrait whose caption dates that year's World Finals to 13 October, plus 1978, 1983 and 2002 newspaper archive frames; video clips from a British news archive with nothing dated 1985 to 2000 visible. The best free reusable period race photograph found is elsewhere: a 600 dpi scan on Wikimedia Commons of a 1994 Argentine 785 Limitada class Kawasaki 750 XRi, under a Creative Commons licence. no public page reached Permission needed Rights-managed editorial, licensed per use; no commercial, promotional or merchandising use without a licence; the Los Angeles Times items also bar political use. Confirmed
The Internet Archive's full-text index Internet Archive holdings 1986 to present for the sport; en Where the Cycle News run, the Sea-Doo handbooks and the stripped PWI issue's OCR were found: 517 full-text hits for IJSBA against 3 in metadata search. The working endpoint was recovered by watching the search page's network traffic after both documented full-text hostnames failed; the research report records it. archive.org Link only Per item; an uploader's declaration is never a clearance. Confirmed
Yahoo Auctions Japan, as a literature archive Yahoo Japan closed listings visible 180 days; a mirror reaches back to June 2015; ja Period Japanese literature: a 1989 Marine Jet dealer pamphlet, parts catalogues by model code, World Jet Sports issues 12 to 27, a Skat-Trak tape, a tuner's printed catalogue. The one auction archive fully open to the research's tools; the Western auction indexes were intermittent. auctions.yahoo.co.jp Link only Listing photographs belong to sellers; nothing is rehosted. Confirmed

Websites (4)

Born-digital sources, live or captured.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
PWCOffshore, the LB2CAT race page RPM Racing Enterprises results 1994 to 2018; cancelled in 2019, 2020 and 2021 per the page; en The Long Beach to Catalina race, 57 miles, IJSBA sanctioned, with a Queen Mary start. No notice of the race's future or of a change of promoter appears on the page as read on 2026-09-30; the site's front page still advertised a 2022 event. pwcoffshore.com Link only Organiser copyright. Confirmed
RiverScene Magazine RiverScene Magazine, Lake Havasu City 2023 to present for its World Finals page; en Current World Finals results, freestyle results and galleries; out of the vintage era. Listed for its current World Finals reporting, not for history; on the read of 2026-09-30 the page printed stand-up, sit-down and freestyle and no class name. riverscenemagazine.com Link only Publisher copyright; a live site. Confirmed
VintageJetSki.com A vintage parts shop, 2019 to 2025, on a domain that earlier carried an unrelated forum and a holding page forum 2011 to 2013; holding page 2014 to 2018; shop 2019 to 2025; dead since 2026; en A four-make vintage parts catalogue and a Legends Series of vintage racer profiles, and a sponsored-rider scheme that was not a race team. Three unrelated sites on one domain, which resolved a dispute in the project's earlier notes. The shop's last capture, July 2025, shows a clearance sale; the domain failed to resolve on 2026-09-17. Its write-up as a competitor is in the market scan. no public page reached Permission needed Unknown; the shop commissioned its own photography, credited to a house name, and ran a bylined editorial series of rider profiles. Not linked. Confirmed
watercraft.com, the online archive of Personal Watercraft Illustrated Personal Watercraft Illustrated Inc 1996 to 2010, captured in the Wayback Machine; en Race reports, IJSBA national tour results and points standings from 1996; the round 5 report of the 1996 Bud Jet Sports Tour was read and partly closes that year's round-by-round gap. Overturned the project's earlier finding that no born-digital PWI archive existed. The site cross-linked its publisher's motorcycle paper by 2003. web.archive.org Link only Publisher copyright; a Wayback capture is linked, nothing is rehosted. Confirmed

Forums (3)

Where riders talk. Named, never cited, until their administrators have been asked.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
GreenHulk 2000s to present; en A second sighting ground for riding words and for Kawasaki model history threads; a member-compiled model table there is not a source for any row on this site. Named so a reader knows where a forum sighting in the glossary may have come from, and that no post is cited. no public page reached Permission needed Members' words, images and usernames are theirs. Not asked; nothing cited or quoted. Confirmed
PWCToday 2000s to present; en The largest English-language sighting ground for riding words, class names and race-weekend talk; several glossary rows record a sighting here and quote nobody. The ask is a precondition of the etiquette page (BUILD-GUIDANCE 4.8 and 4.12), recorded as owner-only in the build plan. no public page reached Permission needed The forum's administrators have not been asked, and until they are this site cites no post and quotes no member. Same terms as GreenHulk above. Confirmed
X-H2O 2000s to present; en The stand-up and freestyle community's board; the earlier culture research rests on it and is held back until the ask is answered. The site's tools could not reach it in September 2026 behind a bot check, which is why the sightings recorded for other forums have no counterpart here. no public page reached Permission needed The administrators' permission is the precondition for any tuning or culture text derived from the forum, and it has not been asked. Same terms as GreenHulk above. Confirmed

Games (1)

The catalogue is under Model Reference; this is the pointer.

Title Years and language What it recorded Where it is Reuse and grade
Personal watercraft video games, 1987 to 2024 Various; the licensors are named per title on the games page 1987 to 2024; en The measure of when the sport was big enough that Kawasaki, Yamaha and BRP licensed their names into games; the catalogue lives under Model Reference. This row exists so the media page can point at the games catalogue; the games collection is the source and its counts are computed there. baddjetarchive.com Link only Each title's publisher; the games page names the licensor on each deal rather than just the brand. Confirmed

The years each title gives

When each was published (19)

Years held or covered, not years published (6)

  • Years the words give
  • Years the words leave in doubt
  • Runs on to the present, in its words
  • Carries on, no end year given
  • A start with no end year given

No bar for 7, whose words give no span of years (ESPN and ESPN2 telecasts of the World Finals and tour rounds; GreenHulk; Personal Watercraft Safety, NTSB Safety Study SS-98/01; PWCToday; Sea-Doo Racing Handbook, 1996 and 1998 editions; X-H2O; Yahoo Auctions Japan, as a literature archive)

19 titles give the years they were published, and 6 rows give the years they hold or cover, drawn apart below them; all are on one scale from 1964 to 2025, earliest first. A bar runs from the first year a row's words give to the last, and does not promise an issue, image or item in every year between. 7 rows give no span of years and are named under the bars.

How we know: Each bar end is a year printed in that title's own years entry in the tables, stored beside it as a number; the dashed parts follow its own wording (about, by, possibly, seller listings).

The films and the games

35 films, programmes and tapes that a source says show a craft on screen, from features to the sport's own race tapes, are listed with what each scene shows at Films.

36 dedicated personal watercraft video games, 9 of them licensed, are catalogued with the licensor named on each deal at Games, which stays filed under Model Reference rather than here. They are the measure of when the sport was big enough to license.

32 titles · 5 languages · 2 quotable · 10 need permission

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