Personal Watercrafts (PWC's)
Buy and sell personal watercrafts (PWC’s) in Costa Rica.
The jet ski on offer down the road could be a smoky two-stroke Sea-Doo from the nineties or a supercharged three-seater that should only ever see premium at the pump, and in Costa Rica both still change hands. Sit-down and stand-up machines from Sea-Doo, Yamaha and Kawasaki, new or pre-owned, range from light two-seaters to touring skis built to pull a tube, and some come with their trailer. Plenty have spent long stretches parked at a beach house between visits, which tells a buyer more than the year on the papers.
Two-stroke or four-stroke, and how many seats:
the engine is the first split, because it tells you how old the machine is and how it has to be looked after. Two-strokes are mostly older sit-down skis: light, loud, thirsty, and lubricated by oil injected into the fuel or mixed in by hand. Every new Sea-Doo, Yamaha or Kawasaki is a four-stroke, and from there size decides the rest. Rec-lite two-seaters like the Sea-Doo Spark or Yamaha’s EX are light and cheap to keep. Three-seaters such as the GTI or the VX carry a family and pull a tube. Touring models like the GTX, the FX or Kawasaki’s Ultra add comfort for long runs along the coast, while the RXP-X and the GP are built for speed. Stand-ups like the SuperJet are ridden on your feet and are a sport of their own.
Supercharged jet skis and the premium pump:
the most powerful Sea-Doo and Yamaha engines are supercharged, and the octane figure in their manuals is an American pump rating. In Costa Rica that means premium, not regular, and a supercharged ski run on regular to save money can knock its way to a damaged piston. Naturally aspirated skis run on regular and have no supercharger to service, which makes them the easier keep for a family towing a tube on weekends. For fishing or for more than three people, an open skiff from the power boats will do more. And if the ski will live in a garage far from the sea, plan on one of the single or double boat trailers built for jet skis.
An old two-stroke against a supercharged three-seater:
that is where the used market spreads widest. A two-stroke from the nineties or early 2000s can change hands for under a million colones, and whoever pays that is buying a project: those engines went out of production long ago, and nobody can vouch for an oil-injection system left unwatched for years. Supercharged touring and performance skis sit at the other end, listed used at around ₡6 to ₡8 million, and they hold that only when the seller can show the supercharger was serviced and the machine ran on the right fuel.
Hull water, dipstick and stored hours on a used jet ski:
ask for the engine to be cold, and be there when it first turns over. On a two-stroke, ask for a compression reading on each cylinder and whether it still runs its oil injection or has been converted to premix; a failed oil line is the usual way these engines seize. On a four-stroke, pull the dipstick: milky oil has had water in it. Most four-strokes also store running hours in the engine computer, readable with a dealer’s diagnostic tool, which catches a swapped or reset display. After a ride, lift the seat and look for water standing in the hull, a sign of a tired drive shaft seal or a leak where hull meets deck. Check that reverse engages and that no overheat warning appears after a fast run: a cooling passage clogged with salt or sand shows itself there first.
Your jet ski, its hours and the fuel it ran on:
say which engine it has, whether it is supercharged, the hours on the display and the dealer’s reading if you have one. Photograph the engine bay with the seat off, the dipstick and the display running. State the fuel it has used, the last service and whether the cover, life jackets or trailer go with it. Plenty of skis in Costa Rica come from owners who kept them at a holiday house in Guanacaste and rode them a few weekends a year, so be upfront about where yours lived. A buyer driving down from Grecia will ask how often it was started and whether the tank was drained, because a ski that sat for months on old fuel needs more than a new battery to run right.