Unfortunately, there are still a high
percentage of morons out there that continue to contribute to the
image of jet-skiers as clueless fools or dangerous assholes.

Keep at it though... keep at it.

(Alright, I changed my mind, I will "take the bait" to an extent)

Keep at it? I intend to, and I have been "at it" for years now...
by "it" I mean trying to educate people about pwc's, who uses them, and
how,
and also actively fighting bans that I and lots of other people feel
are patently unfair. (Going to
public meetings, writing letters, signing petitions, joining clubs,
supporting organizations
that fight for my rights to use public waterways, and "representing" on
behalf of the pwc community every time I go out on the water.)

And I and my friends in the effort have had a good amount of success in
this effort. I've probably
educated just about anyone I came in contact with over the last eight
years, who had
any interest in the subject of boating, friends, relatives, and
especially fellow boaters, about things they
never realized about pwc's, what people do with them, the fact that one
has to get licensed
to operate them, people are amazed and surprised by the ambitious
travel cruises and vacations we use
them for, the new clean technologies in use and the unbelievable range
and fuel efficiency,
and just the type of people (intelligent, respectable, respectful,
family-man-type, law-abiding, sensible grownups basically - like me and
pretty much everyone I have ridden with) who enjoy and own them, in
contrast to their stereotype-informed notions.....and more importantly,
there are almost no bans in effect anywhere in the tri-state area where
I do most of my boating, although the state has a law that allows towns
to enact
pwc bans, almost none of them have (a few tiny exceptions, Montauk
Harbor, although they won't hassle
us if we idle in to get fuel on the way back from Block Island; also
Point Pleasant Canal in NJ, so we have to
take the long route on the ocean to get to Barnegat Bay which we don't
mind a bit!)....and basically my many pwc'ing friends and I have
no problems with any of the hundreds or thousands of other boaters we
come in contact with out in the Long Island
Sound, the Great South Bay, the Hudson River, the Atlantic Ocean, New
York Harbor, Staten Island.....I never feel
like a second-class citizen, am never called names like an annoying
mosquito or clueless moron, basically anywhere in the world except here
in this thread. So this makes me very confident that my efforts on
behalf of myself and my fellow pwc'ers has been pretty successful in
fighting prejucide ad stereortypes....

and most importantly, most of the national park bans that were
temporarily enacted a few years back, have been rolled back or
eliminated as the scientific evidence from the mandated environmental
impact studies, plus of course public opinion on the matter, has rolled
in, including two local areas, Fire Island National Seashore and
Gateway National Park, have been largely rolled back and just replaced
with some milder restrictions....so again I know my continuing efforts,
and those of many others, to educate people and fight for our own
rights, have met with some degree of success, and I certainly plan to
as you say "keep at it."

If you consider me your enemy and hope I fail in my efforts, well, then
I guess that's the way it is, hopefully you're going to meetings too
and arguing for increased pwc bans, that's your right. But really
having heard from me, I would think that you would actually afford me
some respect, "j.," based on my being obviously a fairly educated,
informed, passionate, serious and very active fellow boater. You seem
to want to position me in an opposing camp from you because you have
had negative experiences with other pwc'ers before, but the way I see
it, we are really on the same side and in the same boat, as it were.
You should want me and every other safe, competent, educated,
responsible boater to have access to the public waterways, just as
surely as you want every unsafe, dangerous, idiotic boater off the
water.

richforman