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Sugar Sand boats


obski

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At the Portland Boat Show they had a small little jet sport boat by a company called Sugar Sand. I guess they are being sold in this area by Active Water Sports, as the boat was at the edge of their area. The model they had there was the Tango Super Sport, which is a 16.5 ft boat, but on their website they have models up to 23'. They also have optional wakeboard towers, racks, etc. Anyone ever hear of them before? It looks like they are located in North Dakota.

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The local used sports equipment place had a couple of them this year. They both even had towers on them. The same two were there all year long, so I don't think they ever sold. Never bothered crawling around inside or even asking how much they were going for, but they reminded me of the Yamaha jet boats.

Mike

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The local used sports equipment place had a couple of them this year. They both even had towers on them. The same two were there all year long, so I don't think they ever sold. Never bothered crawling around inside or even asking how much they were going for, but they reminded me of the Yamaha jet boats.

Mike

They are owned by IMAR. They make sugar sand and gekko boats in Fargo, ND.

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Sugar Sands is a pretty well known maker of jet boats. From what I have heard, they make a very nice boat and their owners are loyal. However, I can speak from experience, jet boats may be a blast to drive but they are not good for watersports because of the turbulence and they don't hold speed very well. I used to own a Yamaha jet boat. It was fast and could spin on a dime but it doesn't hold a candle to an inboard for pulling.

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Kind of what I thought. We had a guy bring a Yamaha little jet boat to our houseboat camp a few years ago. It went fast and the kids enjoyed it for a ride, but that was about all it could do. It got boring after a short while.

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a friend bought sugar sand tango to play in lake michigan. he was not very pleased with the durability of the power plant. spent more time in the shop than in the pond. i know he would not recommend sugar sand.

like most jet drives it only pumps water one way. reverse is like reverse on the big jets; swing a reverse thruster over the stream. you could be running wot in forward and slam reverse ("with no damage to the drive system", said the sales guy) and that boat could stop in its' own length. of course doing so would flood the people space. lots of drain holes in the cabin covered the problem.

no power but it was a fast boat.

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Sugar Sand appeared when the jet boat craze took off in the early to mid 90's. Today, it's one of the 3 survivors of that era (the others being SeaDoo and Yamaha). I have never been in one. I have wake boarded behind a friends older 2 engine SeaDoo jet boat. It took a long time to pull us out of the water and then when you got you took off and were flying. You just had to hold on for dear life until you could get the speed set to were you wanted it. It also needed a lot of throttle adjustments to maintain speed. It was fun to play with when we weren't boarding.

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a friend bought sugar sand tango to play in lake michigan. he was not very pleased with the durability of the power plant. spent more time in the shop than in the pond. i know he would not recommend sugar sand.

like most jet drives it only pumps water one way. reverse is like reverse on the big jets; swing a reverse thruster over the stream. you could be running wot in forward and slam reverse ("with no damage to the drive system", said the sales guy) and that boat could stop in its' own length. of course doing so would flood the people space. lots of drain holes in the cabin covered the problem.

no power but it was a fast boat.

my next door neighbor has one (1 year old), and it was in the shop more this summer than out. I have driven it a few times, hated it... Their quality seems really crappy to me.

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Jet boats do not like to be driving slow and maitaining a constant speed is darn near impossible. Also when you turned the wheel it totally cuts the power as it restricts the flow out of the jet. The most fun thing to do in my old jet was to get going fast, back of the throttles, turn the wheel then nail. It would spin so fast that people would fly out of their seats if they weren't holding on. Pulling skiers or tubers was painful as a driver as you needed to make constant throttle adjustments. As for the power plants, I think Sugar Sands used a Mercruiser jet which was based off of one of their outboard models. They were not known for their high reliability. Yamaha uses their jet ski engines. Mine had two 135 HP jets in it and would run about 55 MPH. I never had a single problem with it. In fact, if money was no object, I would love to have another one just to go out and have fun in.

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That is basically a Mercury outboard motor with an impeller instead of a prop. I can't tell what the diameter of the jet drive is. Perhaps it is a 6 inch drive like the jet skis and other PWC. If that is what it is...it is severely lacking in pulling power.

I can personally vouch for the pulling power of a 12 inch dia. jet drive like a Berkley Pump backed by a 350-V8. There is no way you would complain about that drive combination. It is not quite as hard as my 96 RLX with a 320HP Monsoon and 13x12 prop but it is pretty close. When I yelled hit it I was planing on a single ski within 2 seconds. You could really pull the boat around cutting through the buoys. I could do that to an outboard as well so I think the three fins below the ski pylon have more of an effect on the tracking than the propeller.

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My Bu dealer carries them, and "carries them" is an appropriate term. He also sells Potoons and claims he makes more from Pontoon sales than either Malibu or Sugar Sand.

I sold them for 3 years while working at a Sea Ray Dealership here in Indy. At the time, we also 'carried" them... way into the next model year. We always had 5-6 leftovers, due to the outragous price tag on them. They were fast, but not much attention to detail. They went through Sales Reps like Detroit goes through football coaches. Every boat show, there was a new Rep. There marketing strategy was selling saftey against stern drives. They had a cheesy Sales Training video that explained why you should buy jet drive vs stern drive. It was so cheesy, I am laughing just thinking about it. ROFL.gif they also lost value very rapidly, 40-50% in the first 3 years. Not a very good investment. One good thing about them was that they used Mercury Engines, and parts were readily available.

If you are in the market, look for an older Sea Ray "Sea Rayder" 96-98. They came in 14 and 16 ft models, and either 90, 120, or 175 hp. The 175 hp F-16 Sea rayder is much fun, and can be bought for under 10,000 all day long...used of course. Sea Ray stopped producing them in 1998 IIRC.

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