San Clemente, Calif.-based PowerSki International Corp. first unveiled its Jetboard Igniter 2000 in 2001, leaving behind it a wake of accolades from the media. A self-propelled surfboard, the Jetboard promised to be a radical entry into the personal watercraft market. Popular Mechanics gave the watercraft its Design and Engineering Award for 2000, and Popular Science and Time Magazine followed up by including the Igniter in their respective Best of What's New and Best Inventions roundups for 2001.

As we enter the fall of 2003, the Jetboard is poised on the brink of mass production. Its 45-horsepower jet-pump engine, designed and patented by PowerSki, has attracted the notice of other watercraft manufacturers such as Zodiac, as well as the U.S. military and even the aircraft industry, for its unique and compact design.

Between the first public showing and this summer's signing of dealers across the country came the effort to realize an idea that first came to PowerSki founder and CEO Bob Montgomery more than 15 years ago. Moving from a prototype through a series of beta boards and on to the final production board, PowerSki has maneuvered through the tricky shoals of designing and testing a new, complex technology. Pencil and paper are fine for sketching ideas, but to bring the Igniter 2000 to the factory floor, the company would have to use state-of-the-art computer-aided design (CAD), collaboration, and workstation technologies.

Bob's Board

Bob Montgomery's work in the personal watercraft (PWC) industry goes back 25 years, when he opened the first dedicated PWC dealership. At the time, for lack of alternative distribution, Kawasaki's Jet Skis were languishing in motorcycle dealerships. Recognizing that selling watercraft from landlocked dealerships that specialized in wheeled leisure machines didn't reach the right kind of aficionado, Montgomery opened a PWC dealership in an appropriate marine location and proceeded to do well enough for others to follow his lead.

In the early '80s, Montgomery worked at Surf Jet Corp. where he did design work on that company's Freestyle 236 and Malibu 275. In 1987, with the first inklings of a new kind of PWC -- one modeled along the lines of a surfboard -- dancing behind his eyes, Montgomery started working out on paper the initial designs for the Jetboard.

There are two main categories of personal watercraft -- designed for standing or seated riders. Stand-up PWCs have a high, forward center of gravity and maneuver via handlebars, which can be tricky to manage when leaning into turns. Sit-down PWCs allow for smoother turning due to their lower center of gravity.

Montgomery wanted to make a craft that used the sideways stance of surfboarding and mimicked the contours of a surfboard -- "a hydrokinetic rocket ship," as he described it. Through the early '90s, he developed the Jetboard to a working-prototype preproduction stage. In 1995, he formed PowerSki International Corp. to bring his board to market.

PowerSki vice president James Habig describes the next several years as spent setting up the new company and going through designs for the hull and engine. Montgomery did the primary design work for the former, while Bjorn Elvin designed the engine. A former motorcycle racer, Elvin had spent 30 years designing, engineering, and testing motorcycles before joining PowerSki in 1998. It didn't take him long to get his feet wet: According to Habig, "In three months, Bjorn came up with the engine design, put it in the board, and had it in the water."

The twin goals in designing the engine were to make it compact and make it powerful. Nothing was readily available; the age-old internal combustion engine had to be reshaped to fit into a surfboard. The result was the 330cc SuperTorqueXT, a single-cylinder, two-stroke, water-cooled engine that measures 6.4 by 10 by 17 inches and weighs in at just under 40 pounds. The small form factor is essential for board performance.

In 2000, after a year of engine testing, PowerSki had a prototype design, but it was still a long way from mass production.

The Tools to Build the Toy

With a prototype to show off and a basis on which to raise money, PowerSki struck up partnerships to move the Jetboard into production. Two of those partnerships were made to provide the technology needed to refine and improve the board: HP Computers and product-development software specialist Parametric Technologies Corp. (PTC).

PowerSki started using CAD systems in 2000. Habig says the technology splurge was inevitable: "To make our way to market, we needed some powerful workstations. We were working with huge files here, extremely sophisticated designs, that were being regularly updated and changed as modifications were required."

PowerSki has 24 employees and uses two outside engineering companies. Main in-house work is done on an HP Workstation xw8000. The xw8000 can hold two 533MHz-bus Intel Xeon processors with clock speeds up to 3.06GHz each. It features Intel's E7505 chipset, an AGP 8X Pro slot for fast graphics cards, and as much as 240GB of Ultra ATA or 730GB of Ultra 320 SCSI storage

Steve Ryan, engineer at PowerSki, says the company's thirst for computing power has never slaked: "Our setup is very pricey, 20 workstations and four servers, [plus] a few mobile workstations and PDAs," Ryan says. "And we're always asking for more -- we've got a request in now for a Tablet PC and a few iPaqs."

Running on those workstations are PTC's Pro/Engineer Wildfire, Pro/Mechanica, and Windchill. PTC's CAD software creates parametric models to allow designers to manipulate aspects of each component's geometry. Behavioral modeling features let designers analyze the impact of design changes on a model and test scenarios based on different design variables.

There was no shortage of challenges to be met by the Jetboard designers. The hull had to plane easily and handle G-force turns. The control handle had to be sophisticated enough to manage all engine operations, yet easy to use by surfers zipping along at 40 miles an hour, six inches above the water's surface.

Ryan says the CAD programs were essential throughout the design process: "With the software, we're able to take real-time data. If the rails need to be thinner, the ride plate or fin placement changed, we can do the geometry in the software, simulate effects of the changes, and make decisions. No changes on paper; it's all in the software."