My first time out on a speedboat. I was surprised they just toss the keys over and tell you "just be back home on time, son (or else we'll charge you up a storm)." Like the dude didn't even ask me if I'd, like, ever been in a traffic accident before. And here I was about to go 60 mph in a marine vehicle I'd never even touched.
Yay!
--THE PONTOON--
Well, to backtrack a bit, our half of the party first headed out on a pontoon. It was pretty chill, being covered and all, and it moved at a nice pace. Watch out though, the deck is fairly low and hitting wakes can cause a nice flood of water to wash over it - so KEEP YOUR STUFF IN THE LITTLE SEAT COMPARTMENTS. Like your purse (sorry again Kelly!) and camera gear. Could be major ouchie otherwise.
However the pontoon maxed out at like 18 mph.
--ON TO THE SPEEDBOAT!---
The speedboat (they call it a 'ski boat') was simply...awesome. I stood up while driving, which was pretty cool (kind of like riding a horse) and then one of our boat passengers had the brilliant idea of hitting other boats' wakes...I was kind of apprehensive at first, but then shrugged, and said, Why not? And that is the way to GO people, let me just tell you. You can pretty much max the throttle out and hit the wakes hard (helps if you swing out and hit them more straight on). We got like 6 to 8 ft of air once. AWESOME. And don't worry, the dude said the boats go up to 60mph but we didn't (couldn't, though I tried) break 40, so it was pretty safe - and you can take hard turns in that thing and it won't even break a sweat. Amazing design.
It's like a roller-coaster ride, but better - because YOU'RE controlling it.
The counter ladies were very professional and nice (sorry Kevin N. for your experience with the inclement weather - I'll have to keep that in mind for next time!), and the deck guy who showed us around our boat was nice. There was another guy who fronted a 'I grew up on the water and know my starboard from my propeller so don't mess with me man' attitude when I asked him a newbie question, but it was alright, because hey, I'm about to go out on a SPEEDBOAT and have some serious fun. Gave the first guy a nice tip and so hope he spreads the good service love to the second guy.
--COST--
Now, about pricing: the pontoon was $65 per hour, the ski boat $75 (and it actually does come with water skis that you can use for free), but with a 2 hr minimum. Which is pretty standard, and as it turns out JFF is the only place that doesn't charge you for gas, which is pretty tight. It was definitely worth it, and when split among my buddies, wasn't even too bad, like about 20 bucks (pontoon can take 10 ppl, ski boat 8). I mean, there's no other place you can get the same experience (as opposed to a pricey steakhouse, which you can replicate pretty dang good at home with a few bucks' worth of CostCo Choice cuts). For the cost of 2 movies you can get about 100x the entertainment value as compared with, say, Transformers 2. Or whatever lame superstar vehicle is disgracing the screen these days =D
So, if the price is in your budget, and you want a seriously FUN time on the water at beautiful Lake Travis...hit up a ski boat.
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Btw, in my next life I want to be a policeman on Lake Travis. An officer pulled my friend over when he was driving the boat, for a routine safety check (we think it's because we were having the most fun on the lake, hehe), and when he saw that we weren't drinking, and had our fire extinguisher and everything, he sent us away with a wave - and I got a view of the DUAL huge engines on his boat. Woah. I bet that thing gets some monster air. I was majorly jealous! read more