The trigger was pneumonia, a complication of his therapy for superior pores and skin most cancers, stated his grandson Drü Barrios. Mr. Jacobson had lived in California and Arizona, the place he examined and rode his jet skis within the Pacific Ocean and the Parker Strip part of the Colorado River, earlier than transferring to Australia about 25 years in the past.
A thrill-seeking pilot and motorcyclist with a expertise for customizing his personal bikes and sizzling rods, Mr. Jacobson was widely credited with inventing the jet ski, or private watercraft. Powered by an inboard engine and steered with motorcycle-style handlebars, the watercraft turned widespread quickly after Mr. Jacobson licensed his design to Kawasaki within the early Seventies, resulting in the creation of the corporate’s Jet Ski model, which popularized the vessel’s identify and helped create a zippy new summertime sport. Critics complained that the watercraft have been noisy and harmful, however they emerged as a cheaper various to full-scale boats, accounting for greater than one-third of all new boat gross sales by the mid-Nineteen Nineties.
As Mr. Jacobson told it, “the jet ski came about because I needed stress relief.” It was the early Sixties, and he had been working for his father-in-law’s financial savings and mortgage enterprise, spending his free time racing grime bikes within the desert exterior Los Angeles. While different riders lined themselves with leather-based jackets and lengthy sleeves, he prevented most protecting gear, making an attempt to intimidate different racers by exhibiting off a muscle-bound physique that he had honed whereas moving into Southern California’s nascent bodybuilding scene, based on his grandson.
It was a good look, at least till he was thrown from his bike close to Perris, Calif. — by some accounts, he was within the Mojave Desert — and located himself tending to his wounds from the underside of an irrigation ditch. “I was picking the gravel out of my skin and cleaning the blood off,” he later informed the Associated Press, “and I said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’ ”
In search of “a softer landing,” he turned to the water, later writing that he wished to “enjoy the exhilaration and excitement of a motorcycle without the inherent danger of falling onto hard ground at high speeds.”
His creation had a few ill-fated precedents, together with a propeller-driven “water scooter” referred to as the Amanda that was manufactured by Vincent, a (*88*) bike maker, within the mid-Fifties. Unlike the Amanda, Mr. Jacobson’s model was ridden whereas standing up and used a jet pump, not a propeller; it additionally featured an aluminum physique, a fastened deal with pole and a two-stroke engine from West Bend.
By 1966 he had improved on his design, making a second prototype out of fiberglass. He stop his day job, filed his first patent for a “power-driven aquatic vehicle” and began purchasing his invention to producers. Eventually he linked up with the Canadian firm Bombardier, which was extra within the sit-down model of his watercraft, viewing it as a summertime counterpart to their Ski-Doo model of snowmobiles. They launched the unique Sea-Doo in 1968, advertising the mustard-yellow vessel as a “jet-powered aqua scooter” that might go 25 mph however was “virtually unflippable.” It was, they stated, “the new goin’ thing on water.”
But the watercraft by no means fairly bought going. It was discontinued after two years, and Mr. Jacobson signed a new licensing settlement with Kawasaki, resulting in the creation of the corporate’s first Jet Ski fashions in 1973. Painted the colour of pea soup, the stand-up watercraft weighed about 220 kilos and relied on a 400cc engine. The firm launched two completely different fashions, one with a flatter, extra steady hull and the opposite with a V-shaped backside that enabled riders to chop sharply throughout the water.
“The first ride on it, it was worse than a wild horse,” stated Fred Tunstall, a veteran Kawasaki worker who helped develop the jet skis, in a 2000 interview with Boats.com. “But after you spent some time getting used to it, it turned into a lot of fun.”
Over the a long time, advances in cockpit, engine and hull design helped spur the jet ski’s reputation. The Sea-Doo was reintroduced by Bombardier in 1988 and have become one of many world’s hottest boating manufacturers, and rival watercraft have been launched by firms together with Yamaha, the place Mr. Jacobson finally labored as a guide. Competitive jet-ski racing additionally turned widespread, with greater than 30 nations represented in world championship occasions, based on Scott Frazier, the pinnacle of the International Jet Sports Boating Association.
In a cellphone interview, he referred to as Mr. Jacobson a “patriarch” of the game, crediting him with creating what turned the primary mass-produced private watercraft. “He came up with an incredible idea,” Frazier wrote in an online tribute, “and carried it to a height that earns him a place in history comparable to some of mankind’s greatest commercial inventors.”
Mr. Jacobson’s position within the improvement of the jet ski was the topic of a two-decade dispute with Kawasaki, which ran ads saying that the corporate, somewhat than the motorcycle-riding inventor from California, had created the vessel. In 1989, he filed a lawsuit for libel and slander of title, claiming that Kawasaki had improperly obtained jet-ski patents in Japan and wrongly credited its staff with growing the watercraft. A federal jury awarded him $21 million in damages two years later, though he stated he had been on the lookout for far more — $30 million to $60 million, given the fortune that Kawasaki had created from jet skis.
Less than two months later, a federal district choose in Los Angeles overturned the award, saying there was inadequate proof for the claims towards Kawasaki. A brand new trial was ordered, and Mr. Jacobson settled with the corporate’s American subsidiary in 1992. He was awarded a money fee — the quantity was not disclosed, however his grandson stated it was roughly “a couple million dollars” — and issued a joint assertion with the corporate, acknowledging that Kawasaki had made necessary contributions to the watercraft’s improvement. The firm’s vp of selling, Robert Moffit, acknowledged in flip that Mr. Jacobson was “widely known as the inventor of the first stand-up personal watercraft.”
“Indeed,” he added, “without Mr. Jacobson’s invention, Kawasaki’s Jet Ski brand of personal watercraft would not have been developed.”
The youthful of two kids, Clayton Junior Jacobson was born in Newberg, Ore., on Oct. 12, 1933. According to the household, there was a misunderstanding when his identify was taken down, and he legally dropped his center identify as an grownup. His father was a touring salesman who later labored for Kellogg’s, and his mom was a homemaker. Both dad and mom have been the kids of Norwegian immigrants; Mr. Jacobson thought-about himself a modern-day Viking.
He grew up in Southern California, graduating from highschool in Los Angeles, and labored within the wholesale meals trade earlier than marrying his first spouse, Dianne Edwards, and becoming a member of her father’s enterprise, Southwest Savings and Loan.
By then, he was racing sizzling rods, constructing automobiles and bikes, and off-roading in Mexico. He later labored with auto engineer Gerald Wiegert on the design of the Vector sports activities automobile; circumnavigated the globe in a Cessna seaplane in his early 60s; and designed a number of buildings, together with his light-filled residence in Parker, Ariz., and his two-story storage in Australia, which included “a prototype of a flying jet ski that never really came to fruition,” stated his grandson.
He additionally self-published an autobiography, aptly titled “Jet Ski Inventor Autobiography,” in 2013. If a particular person’s ego is outlined as their “appropriate self worth,” he wrote, “mine is about the size of my Ford F250 pickup truck.”
His marriage to Edwards resulted in divorce. He later married Lee Anne McMillan, his companion of 35 years. She survives him, as do 4 kids from his first marriage, Karen Jacobson, Margo Orona, Tava Mericle and Clayton Jacobson III, a aggressive jet-skier; 5 grandchildren; and lots of great-grandchildren.
In conserving together with his needs, Mr. Jacobson was cremated as a part of what he thought-about to be a conventional Viking funeral. He was wearing his common apparel: Levi’s denims, a puffy Oakland Raiders Starter jacket, a Parker Strip T-shirt and a pair of clogs. Then, in what his grandson described as a nod to historic custom, “they put his hand in a bowl of hazelnuts and gave him his Buck knife, which was his closest thing to a sword, and sent him off to Valhalla.”