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@ACrews Can you add some context and clarity on what exactly a "real boat" is? If these Yamaha's I've been buying are fake, I'm not going to be very happy!

LOL I thought the same thing. What is a "real" boat? Probably like most people on the hull truth website. They bash jet boats over there for some reason. Maybe they are thinking of jet boats of the past. The small 4 seater looking things with two stroke jet ski engines in them. The jet boats of today are real boats that happen to have jet drives for propulsion.
 
I am fairly positive that @ACrews did not mean to say that Yamaha’s are fake or tiny old jet boats.
He had a sx240 which he loved dearly.
 
I think the word "wake" was missing... a real wake boat, as in a dedicated wake boat.
 
@ACrews Can you add some context and clarity on what exactly a "real boat" is? If these Yamaha's I've been buying are fake, I'm not going to be very happy!
Lol! I'm mainly only using a term a non-jet boat dealer said to me one time. Don't get me wrong, I bought a SX240 in the spring of 2015 the year the articulating keel was introduced. It was a great boat.

Wishing I had bought an AR or Limited S model, I tried trading the end of 2016 & my dealer was only willing to put $25k in it as a trade. That being said, I started looking into other brands & found that no other dealers would touch a jet boat.

Unless they were a jet boat dealer of some kind or a watercraft dealer, I almost couldn't give the boat to them.

It seemed to me that Yamaha puts too many "demos" out for dealers/reps, etc & at the end of a season, they're dumping them at great prices. It hurts those that paid close to msrp for their's.
 
That's highest robbery.

I hope you kept the boat and sold yourself. That's much lower than a 2010 same model boat is selling on the used market.
 
LOL I thought the same thing. What is a "real" boat? Probably like most people on the hull truth website. They bash jet boats over there for some reason. Maybe they are thinking of jet boats of the past. The small 4 seater looking things with two stroke jet ski engines in them. The jet boats of today are real boats that happen to have jet drives for propulsion.
Yeah, I've heard that forum has a reputation for hating on our beloved water squirters! Lol. I loved my jet boat. It served it's purpose well.

I've always liked Yamaha but a lot of what made me go with a Yamaha boat over a different brand or type of boat was the price. When you look at all the other boats in the same size category, it's hard to beat the Yamaha for everything that is included with price. I'm just a bit concerned that their pricing is starting to narrow the gap with the competition of other non jet boats & for that, they're losing my interest.
 
Wishing I had bought an AR or Limited S model, I tried trading the end of 2016 & my dealer was only willing to put $25k in it as a trade. That being said, I started looking into other brands & found that no other dealers would touch a jet boat.

Unless they were a jet boat dealer of some kind or a watercraft dealer, I almost couldn't give the boat to them.

We bought an AR for the tower. Not because we like watersports (which we just do a little bit of), but the way it cleans up the appearance of the boat. No bimini top to attach. Give a place for the anchor light, flag, and now speakers. It also makes a great thing to hold on to at the dock instead of bending over for the side of the boat, you can stand there easily and comfortably. I recommend a tower to anyone that asks for my advice in buying a boat.

I also find it interesting that the dealers around here will sell off Jet Boats SUPER cheap. They are almost afraid to work on them, like they are some kind of ancient voodoo magic that will haunt your shop for years if you touch one. Totally weird. I got the same response when I owned a rotary powered car (2-RX7's, and an RX-8). Both cases the machine underneath was significantly easier to work on than the "standard" they were used to, and had a very specific set of benefits that weren't for everyone........Makes me wonder what attracts me to such animals?

As @ACrews just mentioned, we bought on layout and value. We got a LOT of boat for our $30k when compared to others in the market. Compared to the $10k we spent on a '98 Rinker, our '17 AR190 is such a significant step forward it's almost not even in the same class. I think a lot of what people here in this thread are complaining about is based on perspective. If you come from a point of paying 3x the money and getting 10x the boat, your perception of value is MUCH different. We're very pleased with the value/quality/features on our 190. I found myself at last years boat show walking around looking at I/O, Outboard, and wake boats and continuously reaffirming myself in making the right decision with the Yamaha. I really think the '19 versions are obvious progressions forward for the brand, and still represent a good value for what you get.

I read somewhere in this thread that someone was disappointed in Yamaha for not being innovators anymore. Sure the 2003 boats were a game changing layout, but how often can that kind of thing really occur? Look at cellphones, the iPhone legitimately changed the landscape for how we interact with a cellular telephone. There hasn't been that level of "innovation" in a decade now. No industry is immune to that, and finding true paradigm shifts takes a very unique set of circumstances to occur. Finding those game changing feature comes very infrequently. In the interim, the engineers and designers at Yamaha continue to make the small incremental improvements that keep the boats fresh, and show some thoughtfulness. Not sure expecting paradigm shifts on a regular basis is a realistic expectation.
 
Jet engine pontoon boats.

Next paradigm shift.
 
It’s so obvious, why hasn’t anyone come out with one yet?
 
We absolutely love our Yamaha, but I do get the "real" boat comment. I stopped in a MasterCraft dealer the other day, DAMN! Yeah we don't wake board or wake surf, but if we were into that 100% I know which boat I'd buy. When I told the guy I had a Yamaha, he acted like he wanted to kick me out of the dealership! haha. Not really but you could tell he thought of them as inferior boats to his $150k beauties with their supercharged V8's and rows of 7 cupholders down one side of the boat.

I knew how to get him though, I asked what the top speed of that ~$150k boat was in front of me. He said, "With just one person and 1/4 tank of gas it should do 35 or 40mph". Hahahahahaha. I laughed. It is funny though, when you tell people you have a Yamaha jet boat, the responses are usually like this... "Yamaha makes boats???" or "Oh, a jet boat. Those use a ton of fuel." or "Jet boats are so inefficient, those engines would do much better if it had props."

It's ok, we all know they make excellent all-around fun boats that have a few really good traits that other boats don't have. The swim deck alone is one of the biggest reasons we bought a Yamaha. Last time out we had 4 people sitting on the back deck while we were tubing. Even if a prop boat had a deck like that, I'd be freaking out about having people sitting that close to a spinning prop. Especially when they wanted to hang their feet in the water while I was driving. Yikes!
 
Damn, I just went to the Mastercraft site and built an X26 with every available option. I wanted to see how much it added up to but they don't tell you until they get your contact info! It's pretty crazy though, you can pick pretty much every single color on the boat, including cupholder and stitching colors. There are 8 different areas of the exterior hull alone that you can pick from any of 24 different paint colors for. It seems that Yamaha thinks everyone wants a battleship grey boat now.

You guys like my custom colors I picked out? hahahahaha. That's like $10k just in paint options.

Capture99.JPG
 
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I read somewhere in this thread that someone was disappointed in Yamaha for not being innovators anymore. Sure the 2003 boats were a game changing layout, but how often can that kind of thing really occur? Look at cellphones, the iPhone legitimately changed the landscape for how we interact with a cellular telephone. There hasn't been that level of "innovation" in a decade now. No industry is immune to that, and finding true paradigm shifts takes a very unique set of circumstances to occur. Finding those game changing feature comes very infrequently. In the interim, the engineers and designers at Yamaha continue to make the small incremental improvements that keep the boats fresh, and show some thoughtfulness. Not sure expecting paradigm shifts on a regular basis is a realistic expectation.

I was the one that said that. There are shifts all the time. There use to be no jetboats. Now how many models and brands are there? People use to waterski, when was the last time you saw that being done? Then hyroslide. Then wakeboarding where it was about the wake being higher further back for jumping and flips. Then lots of tubing. Now it's wakesurfing where they want the huge wave right there. Pontoons use to be cheap junk, now there's a market for 100k gofast luxury pontoon boats. Now bay boats are huge and into the 6 digits. 23' boats use to not ever have a head, that I remember, now a lot do. Now some bowriders are starting to go with that left aisle instead of center aisle and putting a small sleeper cabin in the combined space. I can't remember a single outboard before that had a transom design like the new Searays and Monterys. There is change everywhere and all the time. Sorry, but in the boat department, there has literally been no innovation from Yamaha in over 10yrs. Oh wait, my bad, sorry, they did invent the 'articulating keel'. All I see is them trying to fix the things people don't like (steering, reverse, throttle) and raising the price absurbly for the same basic boat. Oh, and trying to not loose sales to the 'wakesurfing' crowd. Are they making their boats even better? Of course, YES! But the price increases are out of whack.

When I look at what seriously is different between my AR230 and a new AR240, sorry, it's almost nothing. The layout is basically the same. Sure the outward appearance is different, bow is squared off, the rear transom is lower, different engines, different electronics, etc. I don't know how to explain it, but while the two are different, uuhh, they're also not really different. For that stuff that I consider important, literally nothing is different. For somebody that does not currently own a Yamaha, sure, it all helps make the boat that much more appealing (except the price). In 11yrs, the single only thing they've added that I really want is the smooth throttle control. They haven't even solved the grass issue. Would I love my seats to be hinged? Of course! Side table mounts, check!

Now compare what searay and monterey did. They still offer the traditional bowrider with the traditional layout, but now they've introduced new layouts that are quite different and are pulling me and others back away from Yamaha and actually considering going back to prop. I've been jetboating for over 18yrs now, had a seadoo before, but I've never really been about prop vs jet. Yes, jet is safer, no exposed props for the kids, I did enjoy that when my kids were very little but seriously, let's stop BSing ourselves, most did it cause the Yamaha was cheaper, but nobody wants to really admit that. Sounds much better to say I got it cause jets are safer. Yes, one 'can' wakesurf behind a jet and not a prop, but I don't use our boat for wakesurfing at all. If you're super serious above wakesurfing, stop looking at Yamahas and get a real wakesurf boat. For me, it's been about the price and layout. Jet's had for a long time just been cheaper and I also happened to like and then even love their layouts. Well, the prop crowd is waking up and starting to give us the layouts, and Yamaha is helping them out a lot too by #@#@ing up their own pricing.

Just doing a quick search, my 2007 AR230 MSRP was $38k. The new AR240 is $57k. Sure, 11yrs have passed. Then again compare a 2007 Waverunner FX HO at $10.5k and a new FX HO at $13.5k. Hmm, the boats have increased 50% in price, but the waverunner only went up 28%. No doubt, the AR240 would be that much more attractive at 48k instead of 57k. And then when I look at base vs e-series or X, I feel like I'm getting charged yet another extra $20k for about $5k worth of stuff (but all brands are guilty of this). The difference though is the other brands tend to offer alacarte so I only get robbed on exactly what extra I want vs having no choice and getting robbed on all of it.

Yamaha has now easily priced their boats to the point that it's a no brainer to cross shop and look at other boats.
 
Its no secret that I like electronics. I like the form factor of the larger 2.0 screens and being able to mount a phone next to it. It does look a bit spartan though. I would love to see a standard N2K bridge for the eninges and controls etc. One could install an aftermarket MFD to cutomize/intergrate more.

I really like these boats and all of the wiz bang gadgets. The price point is getting a little steep on the higher end but that is a matter of conditioning as it what the marketplace is demanding. I like having the swiss army boat of this size class. I am sure Yamaha makes a great margin and captures a good portion of the mass boat market across its offerings which is good for resale and parts availability. I am also sure we will see the prices continue to go up which is great for resale too. To that note if continued the way it has been even those buying a new 242x today will be in good territory 5 years from now.

I personally don’t get any of the real boat comments. Whether it be at the party cove or pulling up to a restaurant I always get compliments on my boat. Getting outside of jet boats the most comparable cruise and surf boat from a feature set to the 242 x is the cobalt r3 or r5 surf. Even after really good negotiations you will pay 20- 30k more for one of these similarly outfitted after you negotiate. They are a bit nicer is many areas but you pay for it.

Like most I continue to look but there is not anything out there that makes me want to jump to something else at this time. I must say the 2019 blue 242x is one great looking boat IMO.
 
Someone on Facebook mentioned the wake booster can be installed on older models. Not sure if true.

View attachment 81495


What's really cool is that the WakeBooster can attach to some older model Yamaha boats, as well - it will fit on all 2017 and newer 21-foot boats and 2015 and newer 24-foot Yamaha boats. That includes "non-wake" boats like the center-console FSH. Look for the WakeBooster to be available early spring 2019.

https://www.wakeboardingmag.com/check-out-yamahas-new-wakebooster
 
I'm not ashamed to admit jet boats have been attractive to me because of their low cost and high depreciation. I buy them used.

Buy what you like, but with their new offerings being more and more expensive and less customizable, and with 4stroke outboards in existence... They are losing their edge of value from 10 years ago.
 
Only reason the WakeBooster would be attractive to me is if it would eliminate above deck add-on ballast bags. I highly doubt that. We have a proven concept now with the swim deck bag and the gantlin wedge, if it can't eliminate the deck bag then how would it be any better than what we have - IMHO
 
@ptwb You make a number of great points and agree with you regarding the high price tag for the 24's and looking at other options. However, I disagree regarding prop's based on growing up with I/O's. Over the years my dad has owned 3 different I/O "Blue water, Celebrity, Cobalt and every single one has had issues with broken seal's on the outdrive and/or hydraulic issues. In addition to a multiple bent prop's and that's why I went with a jet over a prop.
 
@ptwb You make a number of great points and agree with you regarding the high price tag for the 24's and looking at other options. However, I disagree regarding prop's based on growing up with I/O's. Over the years my dad has owned 3 different I/O "Blue water, Celebrity, Cobalt and every single one has had issues with broken seal's on the outdrive and/or hydraulic issues. In addition to a multiple bent prop's and that's why I went with a jet over a prop.

That's kind of a separate issue, the headaches of owning a prop I/O. I personally have no interest in an I/O or would get one but if I said outboard all the time, no doubt there are people with I/Os or Vdrive that have no problems that would then correct me.

Keep in mind, technically our jets are I/Os, and there are people here who have experienced leaks at the seal.
 
I would not compare the older 23' boats with the 24' boats, in terms of available space they are more like the 21' boats.

With regards to depreciation, all new boats and cars take a big hit going from new to used....that is where the big hit happens. Buying used does help avoid this hit. What helps Yamaha keep selling new boats is the fact that they add new things every year. Not all the new things they add will be attractive to all buyers. I've read some members who've said..."Man I love that new 12" Connext screen...I've got to have that", while others are the opposite. I was surprised when I went to sell my 2005 SX230. I bought it used in 2007 for $25k, and I sold it in 2016 for $19,000 - I think that is really good value retention!

From my perspective Yamaha (like car manufacturers) has done a reasonable job "refreshing" their line up on an annual basis. Here is my historical recreation of this (missing some major changes I"m sure):

  • Pre-2003 (was in the 19' market and less 2 cycle small runabouts)
  • 2003 Introduced SX and SR 230 boats - Major new entry into the boating arena
  • 2004 Added the AR 230 to the lineup
  • 2005 Added more powerful engines
  • 2006 Added a SR,SX 210 and AR 210
  • 2007 Reworked the hull for the 230 series models adding lots more usable space and changing room
  • 2008 Added the 212SS and 212X, and 232 LTD
  • 2009 Added 232 LTD s
  • 2010 Added the SX/AR 240/242 line up
  • 2011 Eliminated the 230 series and took the year off LOL
  • 2012 Added the AR/SX 190
  • 2013 Added the AR/SX 192 and the 212X
  • 2014 Changed the colors of stickers while they played with a new hull design
  • 2015 Added the FSH series Center Consoles & Introduced the Keel and rudder (I refuse to call it an articulating keel!LOL) to the 240s
  • 2016 Introduced the E-Series controls and major tower/bimini and ballast X model
  • 2017 Redid the 21 X model
  • 2018 Introduced the 21' FSH lineup.
  • 2019 Reworked the 19 series
I look at all of that as a decent progression for a company their size. If anything, their biggest problem has been making so many changes and not keeping their dealer network up to speed on how to service these new boats.

The pricing is an interesting discussion too. You can see the progression of MSRPs well in the google doc we track the changes in (new Google Doc version). The original SX230 went up in price nearly 30% over its first 6 years (from 30k in 2003 to 38K in 2009) - roughly 5% per year (inflation was running 2-4%). It was a VERY attractive boat at 30k and they knew it. They wanted to BLAST into the market with an affordable 23' boat, and they did - quickly becoming the best selling open bow runabout. I do agree that they are now approaching a dangerous point where the upscale lake boats aren't much more. But even the Malibu Wakesetter mentioned earlier at 79K is an interesting example. It doesn't come with a trailer - add 2.5k for that ($81,500) and then compare it to the 21' Yamaha 212X at $61K, and you still have a $20,000 delta. For that extra 20k you get a much better wake, but if huge wakes aren't key for you, then the Yamaha has its market....and if Wakes aren't important, then compare it to the AR 210 at $45K and you really start to see the difference!
 
I would not compare the older 23' boats with the 24' boats, in terms of available space they are more like the 21' boats.

I wouldn't say that. The 240 is only a foot longer. The 230 is closer to the 240 than a 210 No doubt the bow is a larger area because of the shape, but still only designed for 2 people comfortably at speed. While the 230 is rated for 10 and the 240 is rated for 12, the only way I see getting to 12 is have 4 people in the front or 2 people always riding on the transom or people are just uncomfortable in the middle. I've been on test rides with 8 people in the main area and no thanks, somebody eventually ends up moving to the front.

LOL, if anything, my 230 is more comfortable for 8 people in the main area than the 240 because of my passenger side flip seat instead of the space wasting captains chair. My 230 boat can sit two people in that space instead of the 1 on the 240.


Yamaha_230_vs_240.png
 
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