History · 1996 to 2026

Sound and off-throttle steering

In plain words. How loud a racing watercraft may be, compared across the three current rule books and traced through IJSBA books since 2002, read beside the federal emissions, safety and park documents of 1996 to 2000. The racing books never mention steering with the throttle shut, and the safety study's own findings on steering were not read.

Two things shaped where a personal watercraft could be run before any rule book shaped how it could be raced: the noise it made and the way it stopped steering when the throttle closed. This chapter sets the sound limits of the three current rule books side by side, follows the IJSBA figure through every held book from 2002, reads what the federal documents that could be reached say about the machine, and records that the racing books say nothing at all about steering with the throttle shut.

The BaddJet shop sells Factory Pipe parts. Those companies are written about here on the same evidence as every other one in this chapter, and no product or shop page is linked from it.

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The sound rules in the three current books

Confirmed

Three sanctioning bodies publish rule books this site reads, and each prints a sound limit with a distance. The IJSBA class documents, as this site's notes on that body read them, set 86 dB(A) at 22.86 metres, printed beside 75 feet, with two exceptions: the Runabout Open/GP document (ROP.1.3) and the Sport GP document (SPGP.1.3) allow 100 dB(A), and the Sport GP document adds that 86 may be enforced if participants are told 14 days in advance. The UIM 2026 book, in those notes' reading of its class articles 501.01 to 502.04, sets 86 dB(A) at 24 metres for the GP4, GP3 and GP2 classes of both divisions and 90 dB(A) at 24 metres for Ski GP1 and Runabout GP1. The IHRA book V.20260603 prints 86 dB(a) at 75 feet in fifteen of its nineteen non-drag class sections and in none of its ten drag classes; fourteen of those sections print only the feet figure, and section X alone adds 22.86 metres, so the metric figure there is the book's own conversion. Four IHRA sections state no limit of their own: Ski GP, Runabout Endurance and Freestyle print none, and Ski Limited reaches 86 only by sending the reader to the Ski Lites documents. Two of the three figures are the same number and they still do not compare. The IJSBA and IHRA distance is 22.86 metres and the UIM distance is 24 metres, so a machine read at 86 under one book is not thereby at 86 under another, and the measurement procedure is each book's own. The held IJSBA books name SAE standards for flame arresters (J-1928) and high-pressure fuel hose (J30R9), and the IHRA book does the same, but no held book names a measurement standard for sound, checked on 2026-10-02; the IJSBA procedure is the book's own section 19.5, read in the next section. A shoreline figure in a lake ordinance, measured by whatever procedure that ordinance names, is a third kind of number, and this chapter compares the books with none. The two SAE standards our research notes discuss are held only as rows pointing at their pages on sae.org, which returned no text to the fetch tool on 2026-09-28.

Sources: IJSBA rule book page; UIM 2026 Aquabike rule book; IHRA rule book V.20260603; 2010 rule book; SAE J1970 standards page (on file, not evidence); SAE J2005 standards page (on file, not evidence)

The IJSBA sound rule, 2002 to 2018

Confirmed

The 2002 book prints the rule inside each technical part. Rule 6.1.8 of the Stock part reads "Sound level shall not exceed 86 dB(a) at 22.86m (75 ft.)" and refers the reader to section 19.5; the Limited, Superstock and Modified parts print the same sentence. Section 19.5 of the 2002 book, headed Sound Testing Procedure, says the Race Director announces at the riders meeting how, where and when notice of non-compliance is given; boats are tested during practice sessions and in heat races; a boat over the limit is listed on the pit board or the rider is warned verbally; the Technical Director posts a list of offending boats after practice; a boat given notice is re-tested in the next race and a rider still over the limit takes a one-lap penalty, as does any other boat found over the limit even without prior notice; a boat penalised once and still over the limit in the following race may be disqualified; and a boat damaged during a race that suddenly exceeds the limit will not be penalised, though it must comply in any later race. The 2010 book keeps the figure and the ladder and changes a few words. Testing is during practice sessions, with the heat races dropped from the sentence; the rider's responsibility runs "at all times"; and the damaged-boat exception says the boat "may not be penalized" where 2002 said "will not be penalized". The 2010 book also prints a second figure, the first in the held set: its Open Class part says the sound level shall not exceed 100 dB(a) at 22.86 metres, and that 86 dB may be enforced so long as the promoter notifies participants at least 14 days before the event. The 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015 books and the 2016 text behind the 2018 change list print the 86 figure in every closed-list part, the 100 figure with the 14-day sentence in the Open part, and the 19.5 procedure in the 2010 wording; the Hungarian translation of the 2006 book prints 86 at 22.86 metres in its parts as well. The 2018 change list itself says nothing about sound. No book before 2002 is held, but Personal Watercraft Illustrated of May 1996 quotes rule 9.1.16 of the 1996 book as 86 dB(a) at 50 feet (15m), against 22.86 metres in the books from 2002, so the distance is longer from 2002 than in that quotation. Across the held books from 2002 onward the number never moved, the distance never moved, and no book says how the meter is placed or which standard the reading follows, checked on 2026-10-02, when the current Scoring document's SCOR.21.1 still left how, where and when to a riders-meeting announcement.

Sources: 2002 rule book; 2006 book in Hungarian translation; 2010 rule book; 2011 rule book; 2012 rule book; 2014 rule book; 2015 draft rule book; 2018 pending changes and 2016 book; IJSBA rule book page; PWI May 1996 Factory Pipe test

The federal definitions: the Park Service rule and the EPA line

Confirmed

The National Park Service rule of 21 March 2000, at 65 FR 15077 to 15090, defines the machine in its regulatory text as a vessel, usually less than 16 feet in length, which uses an inboard internal combustion engine powering a water jet pump as its primary source of propulsion. The preamble records where the term came from: the Personal Watercraft Industry Association coined the term personal watercraft. The racing books held here, checked on 2026-10-06, define it in nearly the same words but give no length: the 2002 IJSBA book, at 5.2, makes a personal watercraft a vessel which uses an inboard engine powering a water-jet pump as its primary source of motive power, then divides it into Ski, Sport and Runabout divisions, and the UIM's 2026 book prints the same definition at rule 500.01 under the name Personal Watercraft/Aquabike. The rule's findings on sound are visitor findings, not measurements. The preamble states that all comments on noise noted the loss of quiet and solitude, and names the concern as the constant fluctuation in engine tone and pitch as craft enter and leave the water while jumping wakes and changing speed, and the persistence of noise from craft that stay in one place rather than travelling point to point. No decibel figure appears in the passages read. On emissions the rule acknowledges the Environmental Protection Agency's 1991 study finding that two-stroke engines lose roughly 25 percent of the fuel they consume unburned into the water. The rule then closes park waters to the craft except where a park designates them, by special regulation in the Federal Register for the eleven areas of its Table 2 and by the procedures of sections 1.5 and 1.7 for the ten areas of its Table 1, with a grace period from 20 April 2000 to 22 April 2002. The federal line between old and new engines is older. The EPA rule of 4 October 1996, at 61 FR 52088 to 52169 and effective 3 December 1996, regulates hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen from new spark-ignition marine engines, beginning with the 1998 model year and reaching its full standard, a 75 percent reduction in hydrocarbons on a corporate average, in the 2006 model year. Its preamble describes existing technology outboard and personal watercraft engine families as those in production for the 1997 or earlier model years that do not use newer technologies, and says of outboard and personal watercraft engines generally that they used for the most part two-stroke technology with high hydrocarbon exhaust emissions. The regulatory definitions in 40 CFR 91.3 were not returned to the fetch tool, so that wording is the preamble's.

Sources: NPS personal watercraft rule 2000; EPA marine engine rule 1996; 2002 rule book; UIM 2026 Aquabike rule book

The safety study, as far as it was read

Likely

The National Transportation Safety Board's Safety Study SS-98/01, Personal Watercraft Safety, reached this chapter as two landing pages. The ROSA P record at the National Transportation Library dates it 1 May 1998, gives notation 7002, and carries an abstract; the Board's own page for the study gives an adoption date of 19 May 1998. The abstract, as read on 2026-09-28, says manufacturers estimated about 200,000 personal watercraft sold a year and over a million in operation; that recreational boating fatalities overall had fallen while those involving personal watercraft had risen; that these are the only recreational vessels for which the leading cause of death is blunt force trauma rather than drowning; that the Board analysed 814, one third, of the accidents reported for 1997 and all of the 1996 accident data; and that the issues examined were protecting riders from injury, operator experience and training, and boating safety standards. The Board's page gives the fatality count as 26 a year in 1993 rising to 83 in preliminary figures for 1997. The abstract says safety recommendations went to the manufacturers, the Coast Guard Auxiliary, the Power Squadrons, a boat owners' association, the state boating administrators, the industry association and the states and territories; the Board's page repeats that list and adds the Coast Guard itself. Neither page lists the recommendations. Neither page mentions off-throttle steering. The report body, a PDF of about 1.5 megabytes linked from both pages, was not returned as text by the fetch tool, so what the study found about steering with the throttle closed, and what it recommended to the manufacturers on that point, is not in this chapter. Our research notes attribute a sentence on the loss of steering to the study; that attribution sits in this chapter's blocked list until the report body is read.

Sources: NTSB safety study SS-98/01

The industry in the Coast Guard docket

Likely

Docket USCG-1998-4734 exists on regulations.gov under the title "Petition for Rulemaking; Alternative Process for PWC Grant of Exemptions", typed as a non-rulemaking docket and last modified in November 2020, as its record read through the site's public data interface on 2026-09-28 states. The Personal Watercraft Industry Association's submission is document 0013 in that docket, titled with the association's name, posted and received on 19 January 2000, with one attachment held as an image file and as a PDF. That is everything read of it here. The docket page and the attachment both refused the fetch tool, and the record carries no comment text, so what the association said about steering or sound is not restated here, because it was not read. What the record establishes is narrow: that the industry association filed into a Coast Guard docket on personal watercraft exemptions two months before the Park Service rule was published, under a docket number that begins in 1998, the year of the safety study. This chapter records the date and number of one filing and nothing about its contents.

Sources: Coast Guard docket USCG-1998-4734; PWIA comment of 19 January 2000

What the makers did, and what the rule books say

Confirmed

The one manufacturer document this site has read is a Honda press release of 2 September 2003 for the 2004 model year AquaTrax F-12X and F-12, read in full on the live hondanews.com page in a browser on 2026-10-02, the archive address previously recorded having never been captured. Under its features the release says: "An ECU-controlled off-throttle steering system (OTS) is provided to help the AquaTrax turn in certain conditions when the handlebars are turned and the throttle is closed." That is a maker's statement of what it fitted, not a measurement of what it did. No Yamaha or Sea-Doo document naming a steering system was reached, so neither is named here. The racing rule books are silent. A search of every held IJSBA text from the 2002 book to the 2016 text, of the IHRA book V.20260603, and of our notes on the current IJSBA and UIM documents, for off-throttle, OTS and steering assist finds nothing. The books treat steering as parts. The 2002 book's technical parts allow the steering shaft, steering shaft holder and handlebar holder to be aftermarket, allow quick-turn steering modifications and aftermarket steering cables, and its pre-race inspection list has the inspector check the steering mechanism for proper adjustment; the IHRA book's J.17 prints the same allowances. No held book names a device that steers with the throttle closed, requires one, or forbids removing one, checked on 2026-10-02 against the same texts. What that silence means for a race machine is governed by the closed-list sentence every Stock part opens with: a system the homologated model carried stays, because nothing allows its removal, and a system the model did not carry cannot be added, because nothing allows it. That is the whole of what the held books say, and the Park Service rule, as read, says nothing about steering either; what the safety study said about it was not read.

Sources: 2002 rule book; 2010 rule book; 2018 pending changes and 2016 book; IHRA rule book V.20260603; IJSBA rule book page; UIM 2026 Aquabike rule book; Honda 2004 AquaTrax release

Not covered, and why (8)

The 75 dBA at 50 feet shoreline figure is the SAE J2005 test.

Our research notes' Master list corrects this on sight, saying 75 dBA at 50 feet is SAE J1970 and that J2005 is a stationary idle test near 90 dBA. Both standards' pages returned no text to the fetch tool, so neither the conflation nor the correction can be checked against the standards themselves; the correction is recorded here and no figure from either standard is published. No held rule book names either standard, checked on 2026-10-02; the SAE numbers the held IJSBA and IHRA texts print are J-1928 for flame arresters and J30R9 for fuel hose, and neither is a sound standard.

Sea-Doo's Off-Power Assisted Steering dates from 1998.

The Master list corrects the date to 2002, on the GTX 4-TEC. No Sea-Doo document naming the system was reached for this chapter, so neither date is published and the system is not named in the text.

Sound and steering regulation cut racing participation or eliminated the venues racing used.

Our research notes' closing inference for their sound and steering section. No held document, federal or sanctioning, ties either rule to an entry count, a cancelled event or a lost venue, and no entry series is held here to test it against.

The NTSB study states that releasing the throttle completely eliminates the ability to steer.

Our research notes attribute the sentence to the study. The report body was not read, and neither landing page contains it, so the attribution cannot be checked and the sentence is not printed as the study's.

Personal watercraft fatalities rose from 26 in 1991 to 83 in 1997.

Our research notes' figures. The Board's own study page, as read, gives 26 a year in 1993 rising to 83 in preliminary figures for 1997; the report body, which would settle the start year, was not read. The chapter prints the page's figure and holds the notes' figures here.

Yamaha's OTS dates from about 2003 and RiDE from model year 2015; Sea-Doo's iBR from 2008 or 2009.

No Yamaha or Sea-Doo document naming any of these systems was reached, and our research notes' own entries mark the iBR year as unresolved. Nothing is named until a manufacturer document is read.

The industry association opposed the Park Service rule on scientific and economic-impact grounds.

Our research notes' sentence. The passages of the rule read for this chapter record the association as the coiner of the term and say nothing about its position; the association's docket comment was not read.

A Bluewater Network lawsuit forced the Park Service to close all parks to personal watercraft by 2002.

Our research notes date the suit and the settlement from a court docket not read here. What the rule itself says is a grace period from 20 April 2000 to 22 April 2002 for the parks in its two tables, and that is all this chapter prints.

What could not be read (7)

• The body of the NTSB safety study SS-98/01 was not read. Both landing pages link a PDF of about 1.5 megabytes that the fetch tool did not return as text, so the study's findings and recommendations on off-throttle steering are absent from this chapter and the section on the study reports only what the two landing pages say.
• The Personal Watercraft Industry Association's comment of 19 January 2000 in docket USCG-1998-4734 was not read. The docket page and the attachment refused the fetch tool; only the record's data (title, dates, one attachment as image and PDF) was read. Nothing the association said is restated here.
• The EPA marine engine rule was read as its preamble only, through the raw-text address the Federal Register's API lists; the regulatory definitions in 40 CFR 91.3 were not returned, so the existing-technology line is given in the preamble's words.
• The sae.org pages for J1970 and J2005 returned only the site header, so neither standard's title nor date was read, and no content of either is stated. The Federal Register's own document pages and eCFR redirect the fetch tool to a block page; every federal text here came through the site's full-text or raw-text addresses instead.
• Honda's 2003 release was read in full on 2026-10-02 on the live hondanews.com page, the archive address previously recorded having never been captured. No Yamaha or Sea-Doo document naming a steering system was reached, so Honda's is the only maker's system named here. No state or local sound ordinance was read, so no shoreline figure is compared with the rule books.
• The IJSBA sound rule is read from the 2002, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015 books, the 2016 text behind the 2018 change list, and the 2006 Hungarian translation; the 2003 to 2005, 2007 to 2009, 2013 and 2017 to 2020 books are unread, so a change in any of those years would not show here. The UIM, IHRA and current IJSBA figures are read from our notes on those documents, not from the PDFs.
• The held 2018 file labels its technical parts Rule Book 2017 Online Part 2.1 under a 2016 title page, so the year of the text behind the 2018 change list is 2016 or 2017; the sound figures are identical either way, and this chapter keeps the title page's year.

This chapter reads rule books and federal documents, not sound meters or accident files. A limit printed in a book is evidence of what a technical inspector was told to enforce, not of any reading taken at any event, and a federal finding is the agency's statement of the record before it, not a measurement checked here. Of the government documents named, one was read as text, one as its preamble only, one as two landing pages and two as docket records; each section says which.

People on record (1)

Each has a page on Key Figures, named for a public role a document records.

• Harry Klemm, performance shop

Documents cited in this chapter

• IJSBA rule book page (ijsba.com): IJSBA Competition Rule Book (the current per-class documents), International Jet Sports Boating Association; sanctioning body, high. The live page, read on the accessed date. It links no single book but per-class PDFs dated 2021 to 2025, twenty of them class documents, plus general, competition and appendix documents. The class and body records on this site were read from these PDFs on 2026-09-07; the chapter's figures for the current set come from those records and from the page itself, not from a re-reading of the PDFs.
• UIM 2026 Aquabike rule book (uim.sport): UIM Aquabike Rulebook 2026 (published 22 December 2025), Union Internationale Motonautique, 2025-12-22; sanctioning body, high. The single 189-page UIM book that covers every class in one season. Rule 500.02 is its homologation article (50 specimens for the production classes, a logbook for GP1 prototypes) and rule 312 its freestyle discipline (five judges, ten criteria, 300 points). Cited here as the body and class records on this site read it, taken from the PDF on 2026-09-08, not from a re-reading of the PDF; the 2005 and 2006 Hungarian translations of earlier UIM books held here were not read.
• IHRA rule book V.20260603 (ihra.com): IHRA Pro Watercraft Racing Competition Rulebook, version V.20260603, International Hot Rod Association, Pro Watercraft Racing, 2026-06-03; sanctioning body, high. The 95-page book, sections A to EE, held here as extracted text and read from it for this chapter. B.7 is the homologation bar (300 identical units, an established distribution network reaching the global market); C.1.3 the freestyle overview; H.1 to H.7 the freestyle operations; I.10 and J.6 the freestyle exemptions; CC the freestyle technical rules, whose CC.1 prints the one open-list sentence in the document. The public address is the rules page, because the PDF is served from an expiring signed link; the version string is the date to cite.
• 2010 rule book (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2010 Official Competition Rule Book, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2010; sanctioning body, high. The complete 2010 book, kept by the Czech affiliate after IJSBA removed it. Part 8 is headed Open Class with Superstock as an addendum; the Stock part carries the Lites and class naming addenda; part 4 prints the 500 unit figure without a Ski exception and the 100 unit route below it; the appendix adds Special Production homologation below 100 units.
• SAE J1970 standards page (sae.org): SAE J1970 (standards page on sae.org, which could not be read), SAE International; editorial, medium, held on file and not evidence. The standard's own page returned only the site header on the accessed date, so neither its title nor its revision date was read. Held so the chapter's blocked entry on the J1970 and J2005 conflation has a record to point at; no section rests on it and no summary of the standard's content is published.
• SAE J2005 standards page (sae.org): SAE J2005 (standards page on sae.org, which could not be read), SAE International; editorial, medium, held on file and not evidence. As for the J1970 row: the page returned only the site header, so no title or date was read. Held as a record for the blocked entry, not as evidence for anything.
• 2002 rule book (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2002 Official Competition Rule Book, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2002; sanctioning body, high. The complete 2002 book in 25 sections, the oldest full IJSBA rule book held here, served from a Norwegian club's document server and captured by the Wayback Machine. Four numbered technical parts (Stock, Limited, Superstock, Modified), three divisions, the 500 and 200 unit homologation figures, and the United States class list.
• 2006 book in Hungarian translation (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2006 rule book, Hungarian translation (MJSZ 2006 rule book part II), Magyar Jet-Ski Szovetseg, translating the International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2006; sanctioning body, medium. A national affiliate's translation of the whole 2006 book, not IJSBA's own wording, so graded medium and used only for its part headings and its class table, where the class names are printed in English. Two accented letters print as substitute characters in the extract. The English 2006 parts are in the Wayback capture index and were not read for this chapter.
• 2011 rule book (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2011 Official Competition Rule Book, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2011; sanctioning body, high. The complete 2011 book from the Czech affiliate's server. Repeats the 2010 Lites addendum (85 and 220 horsepower) and the class naming addendum, and its competition classes appendix still prints 500 (200 for Ski Division) while its part 4 prints 500 flat.
• 2012 rule book (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2012 Official Competition Rule Book, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2012; sanctioning body, high. The complete 2012 book. Its Lites addendum redefines Runabout Lites as four-stroke naturally aspirated Stock runabouts under 2000cc, and its Ski sponson rule is dated to itself, as of 2012, for the four-sponson allowance on Lites-eligible Ski.
• 2014 rule book (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2014 Official Competition Rule Book, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2014; sanctioning body, high. The complete 2014 book. Runabout Lites is renamed Runabout Rec Lites in the addendum, and the class list adds Vintage Ski (JS type hulls only, 550cc maximum), Sport GP and Runabout 1000 Superstock.
• 2015 draft rule book (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2015 Official Competition Rule Book (draft), International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2015; sanctioning body, high. A draft, as its file name says, so cited only where it repeats earlier books. Its class list is the 2014 list unchanged, Vintage Ski included.
• 2018 pending changes and 2016 book (jetski.cz): Pending rule changes to the 2018 IJSBA Competition Program, with the 2016 Official Competition Rulebook text, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2018; sanctioning body, high. The first 74 lines of the extract are IJSBA's posted list of pending changes to the 2018 competition program, written before the Board of Directors ratified them; the rest of the file is the text of the 2016 book (copyright 2016) with its 2016 Displacement Guide. Held live from the Czech jetski.cz server at pull time, not from the Wayback Machine. No signatory is copied from it.
• PWI May 1996 Factory Pipe test (web.archive.org): Factory Pipe Products Sea-Doo XP 720 Exhaust System, by Jeff Hain (Personal Watercraft Illustrated, May 1996, Wayback capture), Personal Watercraft Illustrated, 1996-05; enthusiast media, medium. The magazine's test of the exhaust at Factory Pipe Products' headquarters, naming Ross Liberty as owner, describing his Electronically Controlled Water Injection (ECWI), and reporting that the ECWI was not legal at IJSBA events as of press time. The article's own verdicts on the product are not used.
• NPS personal watercraft rule 2000 (federalregister.gov): Personal Watercraft Use Within the NPS System, final rule, 65 FR 15077 (21 March 2000), National Park Service, Department of the Interior, 2000-03-21; government, high. Federal Register document 00-6717, pages 15077 to 15090, amending 36 CFR parts 1, 3 and 13. The document page itself redirects a plain request to a block page; the full-text HTML behind it was read on the accessed date and is where the definition of personal watercraft, the sentence that the industry association coined the term, the noise comments, the EPA 1991 study figure and the grace period dates were read.
• EPA marine engine rule 1996 (federalregister.gov): Control of Air Pollution; Final Rule for New Gasoline Spark-Ignition Marine Engines, 61 FR 52088 (4 October 1996), Environmental Protection Agency, 1996-10-04; government, high. Federal Register document 96-23063, pages 52088 to 52169, effective 3 December 1996, adding 40 CFR part 91. The preamble was read through the raw-text address the site's API lists; the regulatory text of section 91.3, where the existing technology and personal watercraft definitions sit, could not be read, so the chapter cites the preamble's wording and says so.
• NTSB safety study SS-98/01 (rosap.ntl.bts.gov): Safety Study: Personal Watercraft Safety, NTSB/SS-98/01 (notation 7002), National Transportation Safety Board, record held by the National Transportation Library (ROSA P), 1998-05-01; government, high. Only the ROSA P landing page (title, agency, report number, date, abstract) and the Board's own study page (which gives an adoption date of 19 May 1998 and a fatality trend) were read; the report body, a PDF linked from both, could not be read as text. Anything about off-throttle steering in the study is therefore unread, and no confirmed section rests on this row.
• Coast Guard docket USCG-1998-4734 (regulations.gov): Petition for Rulemaking; Alternative Process for PWC Grant of Exemptions (docket USCG-1998-4734), United States Coast Guard, on regulations.gov; government, medium. A non-rulemaking docket whose title, type and last-modified date (November 2020) were read from the site's public data interface on the accessed date; the docket page itself refused access. Graded medium because only the record was read, none of the filings; a section resting on it is likely, not confirmed.
• PWIA comment of 19 January 2000 (regulations.gov): Personal Watercraft Industry Association submission, docket USCG-1998-4734, document 0013 (19 January 2000), Personal Watercraft Industry Association, filed with the United States Coast Guard, 2000-01-19; government, medium. The docket record of the association's filing, read from the site's public data interface: a public submission titled with the association's name, posted and received on 19 January 2000, one attachment held as an image file and a PDF. The document page and the attachment both refused access and the record carries no comment text, so what the association said was not read. Graded medium for that reason.
• Honda 2004 AquaTrax release (hondanews.com): Honda press release for the 2004 AquaTrax F-12X and F-12 (2 September 2003), live hondanews.com page, American Honda Motor Co., via hondanews.com, 2003-09-02; manufacturer primary, medium. The release headed "2004 AquaTrax F-12X/F-12 - Features", dated "September 2, 2003 - Torrance, Calif.", read in full on the live hondanews.com page in a browser on 2026-10-02. The Wayback address our research notes recorded for its reading of 2026-09-22 was never archived: on 2026-10-02 the Wayback Machine answered that it has not archived that URL, so the live page is the document and the row's address is changed to it. Under AquaTrax Features the release names an ECU-controlled off-throttle steering system, abbreviated OTS, fitted to help the craft turn when the bars are turned with the throttle closed; the sound chapter quotes the sentence. A maker's release, citable for what Honda said of its own craft and graded medium for that reason.

Changes to this chapter

• 2026-10-07: The sound and steering chapter now says under its banner that the BaddJet shop sells Factory Pipe parts, because Personal Watercraft Illustrated's May 1996 Factory Pipe test, cited in the IJSBA sound rule section, carries the maker's name.
• 2026-10-06: The federal definitions section had said no racing book held here defines the craft as the Park Service rule does. The 2002 IJSBA book's 5.2 and the UIM 2026 book's 500.01 both define a personal watercraft as a vessel using an inboard engine powering a water-jet pump as its primary source of motive power, with no length, so the sentence now says that and cites both.
• 2026-10-06: Personal Watercraft Illustrated of May 1996 quotes the 1996 book's sound rule, 9.1.16, as 86 dB(a) at 50 feet, against 22.86 metres in the books from 2002. The IJSBA sound section now says so and cites the magazine, and its sentence that the distance never moved is scoped to the books from 2002 onward.
• 2026-10-02: Honda's 2003 release was read in full on the live hondanews.com page in a browser on 2026-10-02; the archive address previously recorded had never been captured. The makers section and the fifth gap had said the release was unread and its row held as a record; the section now quotes the release's off-throttle steering sentence and the row is evidence. The makers section moves from likely to confirmed, having been held at likely only because that release was unread; its six rule-book rows graded high meet, on their own, the site's rule that a confirmed section rests on one high-reliability source or two medium ones.
• 2026-09-30: Source check against the documents: the UIM figures come from eight class articles, not 501.01 alone; the EPA preamble's two-stroke sentence is about outboard and watercraft engines generally; the safety study abstract gives one third of the 1997 accidents, not a count of 1,997; the recommendation recipients corrected from the two pages; the Honda release's own qualifier restored; the count of government documents read corrected; a sentence resting on an uncited note of ours removed.

Cite this page

“Sound and off-throttle steering”, BaddJet archive, https://baddjetarchive.com/racing/history/sound-and-off-throttle-steering/

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