By Sam Llewellyn

It is a little-known fact that the jetski, like the tractor and the iron lung, was invented by Stalin – though on closer inspection the roots of these machines in a Communist dictatorship are easily discernible. Jetniks, as their riders were originally called, claimed that access to the seas was free to all, and that any attempt to restrict their activities was an act of imperialist aggression. If they wanted to go round and round in circles making a noise like a banshee fornicating with a chainsaw, that was their right. Besides which, jetski noise was a glorious celebration of the triumph of the Machine in the post-bourgeois age (which is why Hitler liked them too). Anyone who attempted to interfere with the things was a counter-revolutionary practically begging to be liquidated.

Stalinism has gone out of date, except in parts of the Labour Party, but jetskis are still with us under a new name. Just as the KGB is now known as the FSB; jetskis have become PWC. They have cast aside their Old Communist roots, and espoused the values of the new Mafia-state Russia, and its practical habit of murdering people who get in its way. Anyone who has seen the elite group known as the Romford Navy mowing down children in Oppies on a Saturday afternoon in August will recognize a classic KGB-style provocation. Similarly, their streaking through speed-limited zones at sixty knots is sometimes compared to the incursion of Russian military aircraft into Nato airspace.

There is no extradition for jetskis, of course. Actually the police do not seem to be interested in their depredations, or even if they are they find it very difficult to catch up – this in spite of the fact that jetskis are unpopular with all but the most Corbynista yachties and motorboaters. It is never right to take the law into one’s own hands. Pro-Western seafarers, however, have been heard discussing ideas for informal jetski control. Here they are, so that you can avoid them, obviously.

  1. Cheese wire. A length of steel wire or very heavy monofilament stretched across an Essex creek would be a terrible thing, since it would cut a Jetnik clean in half. So we do not want any of that, much.
  2. Fuel additives. Clever people of a mechanical disposition have suggested printing up a label reading something like KILLERJUICE JETSKI FUEL ADDITIVE – 200MPH GUARANTEED AND IT STINKS – CONTAINS VIAGRA. You then, they suggest, attach the label to bottles full of engine-wrecking sugar syrup or linseed oil, and insinuate these on to the shelves of jetski dealers, or ‘unsafe houses’ as they are known under Moscow Rules.
  3. Random string. Probably the easiest method for the tyro saboteur. Jetskis are powered by waterjets produced by impellers in tunnels. Arrange for a bit of floating line to be in a jetski’s track – for instance, in the middle of a group of little children learning to sail, or yachties entertaining their grandparents to tea on moorings in a quiet backwater. Jetskis, inevitably attracted to such scenes, will descend with the object of drenching one and all. Their machines will inhale the mess of line (don’t waste good rope – baler twine is ideal, cut into shortish lengths so it will get through a protective grille), which will wrap itself round shaft and blades. The faster the jetski is going, the worse the mess of caramelised polypropylene in the pump tunnel.
  4. Gunfire. In the UK gunfire is of course illegal. In America, land of the brave and home of the free, it is positively encouraged, and the NRA is split more or less down the middle between those who see jetskis as handy platforms for the mobile gunner, and those of a quieter disposition who wish to blow all jetskis out of the water. A jetski travelling at sixty knots over a chop is a tough target, even if it does return time and again as its pilot steers it round and round in the traditional donuts. This has led many in the US sailing community to conclude that the jetski menace is the only real justification for the continued legality of automatic assault weapons.

I hope this helps.

First published in the Marine Quarterly, www.marinequarterly.com

Image: Jexit, pursued by bear (with apologies to fans of the bard, etc)