If you’re ever in Gold Beach, Oregon do yourself a favor and take a jet boat ride on the Rogue River. We rode on the Blossom Bar; a sleek affair equipped with twin V-8 engines producing 1200 horsepower, capable of 30 mph and needing only 7 inches of draft. The engines provide power to pumps that draw in water near the bow, compress it, and then forced it out the stern…voila, for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction and away she goes. On the day of our ride there were two crewmembers: Jeff, the driver and his yellow Lab, Sadie. Jeff engaged the throttle, Sadie braced herself, and with that we went skimming across the water.
I’ve ridden in normal powerboats before. When you encounter an object that blocks your way, you simply turn the wheel and go around it. Jeff had a different technique. A large rock loomed up in the middle of the river and we continued to head straight for it. At the last minute, Jeff turned the wheel, adjusted the engines and the boat, with a great sure-footedness, simple side-slipped past the rock, all the time still facing the rock. Another turn of the wheel and we were back on a straight line.
So as not to cause a wake that would seriously rock passing boats and at the same time not have to slow down, Jeff put the boat into a fast sideslip, which sent most of the wake away from the other crafts. “Think of the jet boat as a ski,” Jeff said. “When you turn on water skis, the wake goes out the side.” Jeff used the maneuver effectively going upstream, but going down stream, he simply eased back on the throttle.
But that wasn’t all Jeff had in his bag of tricks. There were two other maneuvers that got our adrenalin rushing, the “quick stop” and the “pirouette.” The quick stop is just what the name implies accomplished when Jeff reversed the engines. Down went the bow, up went a wall of water forward of the boat and in an instant we were at a complete stop. But the greatest thrill was the pirouette. At cruising speed Jeff warned us and then caused the Blossom Bar to do a 360. In the tight turn the boat spun as a huge wave came up over the bow soaking all, especially those up front.
It was funny, when we first left the dock and hit the open water and Jeff made those fancy maneuvers, people hung on for dear life, wives reached for their husbands and husbands reached for anything they could hang onto. But by the time we had done a few, everyone felt like “old salts.” Nobody reached for anything! We cheered and whooped instead. Ok, so Jeff was a bit of a show off, but he made that ride a whole bunch of fun.
Q
