Surf City Jet Ski & Watersports

Transcript

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Welcome to Topsail Insider where you can hear all about the businesses and events in the beautiful coastal towns in the greater Topsail area of North Carolina.

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Coming up, we have Trudy Solomon hosting today and she's interviewing Katie and Houston Louder owners of Surf City Jet Ski and new this year Louder's Furniture.

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We're talking about jet ski rentals, jet ski tours, paddleboard and kayak rentals Basically, all the summer fun things you need to add to your summer vacation.

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On today's episode of Topsail Insider, experience a new level of luxury on Topsail Island at Saltwater Suites in Surf City, north Carolina.

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With no nightly minimum, you can enjoy short getaways or an extended stay.

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Each suite features luxury bedding, full kitchens with dining tables and dishwashers, and all suites other than the three ADA suites have full-size washers and dryers.

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And don't forget about those beautiful ocean views.

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24-7.

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Self-check-in provides a hassle-free and seamless experience.

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Saltwater Suites is the perfect choice for your next beach getaway.

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Book your next Topsail visit at saltwatertopsailcom or call 910-886-4818.

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Or call 910-886-4818.

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Saltwater Suites Topsail Island's premier luxury hospitality experience.

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Come on out to Surf City Line for the best made-from-scratch beach and bowls on Topsail Island.

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Treat yourself to their delicious bowls with shrimp, steak, fish, chicken or pork, or enjoy their peel-and-eat shrimp, beach break salads and more.

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They offer a full bar serving handcrafted cocktails, incredible margaritas and they proudly serve North Carolina craft beer.

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The line boasts the biggest deck on the island with three levels for listening to live music, relaxing in the sun, or head on up to the top deck to enjoy your meal with ocean views.

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Visit SurfCityLineNCcom for their full menus.

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The best service and beach vibes on the island await you at 2112 North New River Drive.

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Whether you're a local or visiting from out of town, celebrating a special occasion or just soaking up the sun with family and friends, it's always a great time at Surf City Line.

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Welcome to Topsail Insider.

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My name is Trudy Solomon and I am your host today.

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Today we're talking with Houston and Katie Louder.

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They are the owners of Surf City, Jet Ski and Water Sports.

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Welcome, Houston and Katie.

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Thank you for joining us.

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Hey, thank you for having us.

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What's up?

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Glad to be here.

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We have lots of fun activities folks can do around here during the summer and beyond, just hanging out on our beautiful beaches, and we want to talk today about your business.

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Surf City, jet Ski and Water Sports definitely gets you off the beach chair and speeding down our intercoastal waterway.

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Obviously, you offer jet ski rentals, but what are the other sport rentals and services you offer?

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So, yeah, we do jet ski rentals primarily.

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However, we do offer guided tours and guided adventures, where we take people out and we see other parts of the waterway pretty much from here all the way down to Carolina Beach.

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We also do stand-up paddleboarding kayaking, and we'll be introducing paddleboard yoga this summer as well.

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That's a lot of activity and that's a long distance too.

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I like that.

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About what?

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A 55-mile round trip for our longest two-hour guided ride.

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Yep, well, you're located at 512 Roland Avenue.

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This is where your office and your docks are both located.

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That's correct.

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How far can folks go away from the dock?

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What is the riding area?

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Talk about that, because you said all the way to Carolina Beach.

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Well, for our guided rides it really varies.

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We can run from Surf City all the way down to Carolina Beach.

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For our freestyle rentals we ride between the two bridges of Topsail, so you have the Surf City Bridge and the North Topsail High Rise.

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That's a nine mile distance.

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You're free to play in the waterway in your freestyle rental anywhere in between, as long as you're staying in the channel, that's a huge area.

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That is a big area.

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Yes, tell me about Surf City Jet Ski business.

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How long have you been in business?

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We started Jet Skis in 2011 in Carolina Beach and we opened up Surf City Jet Ski Rentals in 2015.

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So we're going on.

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Our ninth year We've been in the business for 14 years.

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Right, so two different locations.

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So you've been doing jet skis longer than you've been in Surf City.

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Yes, right, all that's located right here within the same general area.

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But you're from North Carolina.

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You were born and raised here right.

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Both of us were born and raised in Albemarle, north Carolina.

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It's about an hour east of Charlotte, that's not coastal?

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Nope, not coastal.

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What brought you here?

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Yeah, so I came down to visit my brother and look for a job.

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It stuck, I came down.

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It was my first year teaching.

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I stayed at home through college, literally at home went to a hometown college.

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So I came down the first year that I was a teacher.

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I said I'm going to go and spend the summer at the beach, at Carolina Beach, and same so you grew up in the same area, uh-huh, we grew up together.

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You knew each other, uh-huh, and you both ended up in the same area here.

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Yep, but you weren't planning that together, no.

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So we remained friends all through college, high school.

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He actually took me to high school.

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He's a year older than I was, so just buddies and we reconnected.

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When I moved down here for the summer I started working for him, but this was your boss, that was it.

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This is still my boss.

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We'll just put that out for the public.

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That's great.

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That's great.

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She moved down for the summer and we kind of rekindled things, and once I rekindled I guess there was nothing really to begin with.

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No, yeah, yeah, I started work.

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That was the second year you guys were in business, so I started working for him and I was still a teacher.

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So it just kind of worked out and obviously we started dating that summer.

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And.

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I continued working there every summer, there on after, and now you not only have a business together, you have a family together and everything that's wonderful.

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But you've got other adventures, so you have a new business too, besides the jet skis.

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Yeah, we have Louder's Furniture now.

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We sell furniture that's not related to the water sports.

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No, never.

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How did that happen?

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Oh man, that fell in our lap a little bit.

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We've been looking for something.

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We're selling Carolina Beach Jet Ski Rentals to one of our longest employees, since we live in Surf City now it's just not feasible to go to Carolina Beach and he wanted to continue, so he's actually buying it.

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We knew we needed something else to supplement losing that in the future and we went to buy some furniture in Sneeds Ferry.

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My last birthday my mom was going to buy us some outdoor poly furniture.

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And we met Mr Tommy.

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Instead of just buying some outdoor furniture, you bought the store Pretty much.

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I mean that's interesting.

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So now you've got these two businesses, they obviously have different clientele, probably different busy seasons.

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How is this working?

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It's working.

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This will be our first season with both.

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So far so good.

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Houston has been primarily at the furniture store right now to do the deliveries, to unload the trucks.

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I'm at the jet ski dock Until jet skis break.

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Then that'll flip-flop and he'll be at the jet ski dock.

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But so far so good.

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The furniture store really just triggered us one because we wanted something that was ours, that we owned.

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We own the land.

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So you know we're not dealing with leases and it's not as insurance-driven, it's not as weather-driven.

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It is still pretty seasonal.

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We think we definitely have been busier with dealing with rental houses, but it's more year round and definitely with furniture.

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We're dealing with locals, with jet skis we mainly deal with tourists.

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So it is completely different clientele.

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So your jet ski business back to that.

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You start.

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Tell me your season for that?

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Typically Easter to Labor Day.

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Okay.

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So you're ready to go by Easter and you've got that up and running certainly by now oh yeah, we're there.

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You've done this business for years and you had two locations and now you're going down to just the Surf City location.

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Tell me what you do, what equipment you have, what you do to prepare for the season.

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We don't, we just guess Such a lot Houston does.

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Houston spends all winter I don't what's the correct term getting the jet skis ready, because we sell them.

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We redo our jet skis every year.

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We've been doing that for I don't know how many years.

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It took a while to get there, but we've learned that's great for our business.

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So we sell them.

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So Houston spends all winter getting them ready to sell, getting the new jet skis ready there's things he does to them to get them ready, getting the docks ready Just a ton of the maintenance and mechanical side.

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We both spend a lot of time on the website.

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We pour into our website every single year.

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Well, keeping that updated is important, especially like you said, you have a lot of tourists, so that's one of the first places they'll go.

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We drive people to the website.

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That's our hub.

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All right.

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So the two of you have your businesses.

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Tell us about your family.

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We got a little seven-year-old going on 70.

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Maverick, that's our little buddy.

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We had him soon after we got married we both, I think, before we got married.

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And when we got married we did not know if we wanted kids, didn't know, it wasn't hard, no, it wasn't hard, yes.

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But we decided once we got married well, we'll just see what happens.

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And it happened real quick.

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So Maverick came into our life the first summer that we opened Surf City Jet Ski Rentals, I was pregnant, I was working at Carolina Beach by myself.

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Basically, houston was driving up here from Carolina Beach, and that was a summer.

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Yeah, it was busy.

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That was busy.

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I was big and pregnant and tired, trying to stay in a good mood for all your customers.

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Yeah, that was tough.

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That was really tough and I swear that was the hottest summer to the books.

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It probably wasn't but to me it was so where's.

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Maverick now in the picture.

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Maverick is at Surf City Elementary.

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He loves it.

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That's one reason we wanted to be in Surf City.

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We love the community.

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So Maverick thinks he is in charge of the jet ski regional dock.

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He actually just what.

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Two days ago he was docking jet skis.

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He was down there with his hands on his hips waiting on the customers to get back.

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He tells all of his friends at school that y'all are going to work for me at Surf City Jet Ski Rounds when we get older.

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Yeah, we're in trouble.

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He is.

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He's very bossy and we keep asking.

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I wonder where he gets that from.

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Katie, katie.

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Okay, if I showed up tomorrow to get a jet ski, I would run into Maverick.

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Most of the time.

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So he goes.

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He spends know this, being in Sur City.

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Everybody's a family there.

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All the business owners are friends with each other.

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We have each other's back.

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So when they started doing that full day camp what it's been three years ago, he's been going and it's awesome because they come to Soundside Park to eat lunch.

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So like we get to see him, his counselors will walk him across there During the weeks.

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He shows up like all of our employees are, like his big brothers and big sisters and since he's the only child that really works out, to provide that for him.

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I want to talk about your employees just more than just you two running things.

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You've got a lot of good help.

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We have 17 employees right now 17.

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I know the Jet Ski place you're guiding people.

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There's a chance for someone misunderstanding something or having some kind of trouble.

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So I love that you have a lot of good staff, so tell me about them and what you require.

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Yeah, so that's been a learning curve but we have been so blessed I don't know probably since we opened Surf City.

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The first year was tough but we get all local kids.

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We have a few kids who come here for the summer.

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They have beach houses here, so they've grown up in the summer and then most of them are topsoil maybe Dixon and we've learned that high school and college kids are great for our job because that's when we're operating.

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So we used to require them to have jet ski experience, but we've since then learned that's not as important because we can teach them that you pour a lot into that, we pour a lot into that.

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We need trustworthy, good kids, good, respectable kids, and I don't know how, but we get them.

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Every single kid.

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That's worked for us.

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I mean, honestly, we become family with them.

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We'll have a Christmas party even though we haven't been at work for months.

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So we just we require that.

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The normal morals.

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I guess that's what we need.

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If we can get that, we can train them into a jet ski employee.

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We put them through first aid, cpr certification.

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We do it with surf city fire department.

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They have to have their boater's license.

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Obviously we require that they have to do that themselves to get that.

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And then Houston spends tons of time with them on the water getting them used to everything they need to know.

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I'd spend tons of time with them on the customer facing end and yeah, it just works.

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And we usually have a handful that come back throughout high school and college and workforce in the summers and they take it serious.

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I don't know how we've gotten them to take it so sick, but they, they get the seriousness up.

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Yeah, they get that.

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They get the seriousness of it as much as fun as it can be.

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It is dangerous, it can be, it can be, and they know that.

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You can read our reviews that we get every day.

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It's always of how knowledgeable our employees are we're bragging a little bit about how well your staff is trained and ready for what might happen each day, but I'm going to brag a little bit more.

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So surf city jet ski was traveler's choice on trip advisor for 2021 and 2022 and you have a lot of great ratings.

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You have five star customer ratings and you have the largest riding area in north Carolina, and so you've got a lot of opportunities out there for people to come and have fun, and you do get brand new jet skis every year.

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Tell us about what's out there now when people show up.

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So right now we've got Yamaha VX.

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We love Yamaha.

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You've had.

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Yamaha equipment for years Yep.

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Yeah, so when I went to MMI MMI is Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Orlando I was trained on Yamaha products.

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They make a good product and we buy new skis every year, so it's super dependable, really reliable for the customer and for your sake, I think just as much.

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So when Katie said, when the jet skis start breaking, you have to come over and fix them, but yeah, if you have a new product that probably cuts down on those headaches and that would be a problem if a tourist was here and trying to rent and half their adventure was dealing with issues.

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That's right, and we don't want issues.

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We want a flawless experience and the customers love it.

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We have customers that come every year and they love like, oh, what color are the jet skis going to be this year?

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Oh, do they or do you?

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pick out different colors.

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I don't know.

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Yamaha changes them, so they come out with a new color.

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So, like even us, we get excited.

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What color is it going to be this year?

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Okay, they're beautiful this year.

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Every couple of years they change the body style and different colors.

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Okay, so you have the old jet skis still.

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What do you do with those?

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We sell them individually, okay.

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Yeah, do you do that like at the end of the season or something like that?

00:14:06.988 --> 00:14:07.428
Pretty much.

00:14:08.149 --> 00:14:09.792
Pretty much.

00:14:09.792 --> 00:14:13.937
But if I bought one and I have trouble with it, do I get to call you to come fix it?

00:14:13.937 --> 00:14:14.619
No, ma'am, nope, sorry.

00:14:17.985 --> 00:14:19.350
I think you've helped us.

00:14:19.350 --> 00:14:21.336
You've had some people I definitely have, he has.

00:14:21.544 --> 00:14:26.437
But no, and we have so many people actually reaching out to hey, can you guys work on our jet skis?

00:14:26.845 --> 00:14:30.765
Oh, because there's no apparently there's not, maybe not, but you do have the experience.

00:14:30.765 --> 00:14:31.287
I love this.

00:14:31.287 --> 00:14:32.927
You have the experience with the equipment.

00:14:32.927 --> 00:14:37.352
You give your high school and college kids, you give them a lot of good training and you guys are prepared.

00:14:37.352 --> 00:14:38.833
I guess that's the point I want to make.

00:14:39.514 --> 00:14:42.057
We take it serious, people assume that we don't.

00:14:42.518 --> 00:14:52.051
I think Jet Ski Rentals have a little stigma, but we don't we take it so serious and I guess because we're together and this is our family business.

00:14:52.051 --> 00:14:54.716
Every night we go home and, okay, what happened today?

00:14:54.716 --> 00:14:55.957
What can we make better?

00:14:55.957 --> 00:14:57.200
Won't it look really good?

00:14:57.200 --> 00:14:58.370
What should we capitalize on?

00:14:58.370 --> 00:15:00.972
And that we've taken pride in that.

00:15:00.972 --> 00:15:03.370
Like we want to be the best, we want to be professional.

00:15:03.370 --> 00:15:08.510
We are not just this jet ski rental people that decided to buy two jet skis and we're going to rent them out to you.

00:15:08.510 --> 00:15:12.636
We try to stand out from everyone else that we are a legit business.

00:15:12.677 --> 00:15:15.640
That has been here and are going to be here for a long time.

00:15:15.640 --> 00:15:22.951
So what if I'm a tourist who is from inland, didn't grow up on the coast, didn't have a lot of boating or lake or anything experience around me?

00:15:22.951 --> 00:15:25.605
So I'm coming here and I've never been on a jet ski?

00:15:25.605 --> 00:15:27.530
So I want to help that person right now.

00:15:27.530 --> 00:15:30.527
Think about what they're going to encounter when they arrive.

00:15:30.527 --> 00:15:33.216
They have to come over to the dock and then what happens next?

00:15:33.304 --> 00:15:34.407
Yeah, First question can you swim?

00:15:34.407 --> 00:15:37.111
They have to come over to the dock and then what happens next?

00:15:37.111 --> 00:15:37.994
First question can you swim?

00:15:37.994 --> 00:15:39.076
Oh, yep, it's helpful, right, it is helpful.

00:15:39.076 --> 00:15:40.418
That's the first one.

00:15:40.418 --> 00:15:48.878
And then, once they sign up, they meet requirements, we have them check a few boxes on our website to get through that booking process to make sure that, okay, this is a good thing, right?

00:15:48.945 --> 00:15:50.885
And that's on the booking screen for them, so there's no surprises.

00:15:50.885 --> 00:15:51.346
Let me ask this.

00:15:51.365 --> 00:15:57.513
If there's no surprises, Let me ask this If someone wanted to walk up and wanted to get a jet ski, it's probably you guys stay so busy, you might be booked.

00:15:57.513 --> 00:15:59.475
So it's best for people to go to the website first.

00:15:59.495 --> 00:16:00.736
It's definitely best to book.

00:16:00.736 --> 00:16:04.301
When the heat of the summer hits, there's a good chance we don't have any skis sitting on the dock.

00:16:04.301 --> 00:16:13.635
Being in the middle of town, we have people constantly walk up.

00:16:13.635 --> 00:16:16.100
Hey, that takes out human error that they can see it.

00:16:16.100 --> 00:16:18.253
And here it is because there are requirements.

00:16:18.253 --> 00:16:21.490
You know you've got to swim, even though you have a life jacket on.

00:16:21.490 --> 00:16:22.594
That's what we explain to people.

00:16:22.594 --> 00:16:24.110
You've got to swim because you're scared of the water.

00:16:24.110 --> 00:16:26.115
If you can't swim and that presents an issue.

00:16:26.115 --> 00:16:30.288
You've got to be 18, obviously to rent the jet ski because you're signing legal binding documents.

00:16:30.687 --> 00:16:34.452
So they've been on the website and checked some boxes and they've show up Checked some boxes, that's about it.

00:16:34.452 --> 00:16:40.260
That's it Checked some boxes and you're going to show up and you're going to be there a lot of time, and then what happens?

00:16:40.544 --> 00:16:43.595
Yeah, yeah, once we get them checked in, make sure all the waivers are finished properly.

00:16:44.349 --> 00:16:45.524
Check IDs, all the things.

00:16:45.884 --> 00:17:09.458
We actually spent a lot of time making a orientation video that's very basic and it ends I don't want to say complicated, but very thorough, so that anyone from anywhere can, within watching that 10-minute video, they're going to have a really good understanding of how to operate safely, navigate the waterway safely.

00:17:10.165 --> 00:17:12.071
Those two things are those are the two things.

00:17:12.071 --> 00:17:13.015
So it's a 10-minute video.

00:17:13.015 --> 00:17:26.476
Everyone sits down and watches it and they also also go through, or they have a safety checklist that they follow along with that, and there's a couple of questions at the end that just kind of trigger your brain into reverse thinking on what should I do in this situation?

00:17:26.476 --> 00:17:27.478
What should I do in that situation?

00:17:27.478 --> 00:17:27.878
That kind of thing.

00:17:28.807 --> 00:17:29.509
Yeah, we give them a quiz.

00:17:29.509 --> 00:17:30.546
We've been doing the quiz for what?

00:17:30.546 --> 00:17:31.186
Two or three years?

00:17:31.186 --> 00:17:39.038
We've done that safety checklist for as long as I can remember, but we turned it into a video years ago and I revamped the video last year.

00:17:39.057 --> 00:17:39.898
That's a good idea.

00:17:39.898 --> 00:17:40.779
People are very visual.

00:17:40.779 --> 00:17:41.906
They are, and it has.

00:17:41.946 --> 00:17:44.595
Like I mean we have actual video of the jet skis in the map.

00:17:44.595 --> 00:17:48.715
We actually had one of the wildlife officers, I think from Carolina Beach, saw it not so long ago.

00:17:48.715 --> 00:17:57.589
He's like can I have this to give to all the rentals?

00:17:57.589 --> 00:17:59.075
And I was like absolutely not proprietary, we worked too hard.

00:17:59.075 --> 00:18:07.848
We did, we worked really hard on it and um sure that, like I I tell people a lot of times, our renters sometimes are more knowledgeable than some of people that are not renting on the water because we give them so much information before they go out.

00:18:07.970 --> 00:18:11.327
And it's fresh on the brain they didn't learn it five years ago, when they took online test?

00:18:11.327 --> 00:18:13.472
They learned it five minutes before they got on the jet ski.

00:18:13.472 --> 00:18:13.973
Okay, okay they.

00:18:14.214 --> 00:18:16.278
Okay, they've gone through the video and the safety and all that.

00:18:16.278 --> 00:18:21.371
They're on their jet ski, so there's a few options that y'all provide for getting out and going.

00:18:21.371 --> 00:18:26.436
You said bridge to bridge earlier, so that's from the Surf City Bridge to the North Topsail Bridge.

00:18:26.436 --> 00:18:26.759
That's right.

00:18:26.759 --> 00:18:28.405
That's the nine mile stretch, nine miles in between.

00:18:28.425 --> 00:18:30.469
For the freestyle, yeah, freestyle, okay, and that's.

00:18:30.469 --> 00:18:31.570
Is that your most common?

00:18:31.570 --> 00:18:32.792
That's our most common.

00:18:32.792 --> 00:18:35.037
One hour Most people want to go for an hour.

00:18:35.176 --> 00:18:39.874
And you get to cruise at your own speed, your own pace, and we have employees that are on the water as guides.

00:18:42.029 --> 00:18:49.675
You don't have to follow them, but they're out there making sure that you're being safe, making sure that other boaters and jet skiers aren't being unsafe, but to help you.

00:18:49.675 --> 00:18:51.548
There's constant contact on the water.

00:18:51.548 --> 00:18:54.414
That way, you can do what you feel safe doing.

00:18:54.996 --> 00:19:01.413
But talk about beyond that though, If you did something different from bridge to bridge Guided ride.

00:19:01.413 --> 00:19:06.673
So the guided ride is that you have to follow one of us because we're taking you outside of our riding area and definitely for all the locals they understand when you start heading south.

00:19:06.673 --> 00:19:08.066
Sandbars are horrible.

00:19:08.066 --> 00:19:10.951
They change every year, but there's definitely more scenery.

00:19:10.951 --> 00:19:13.614
So when you go on the guided ride, we're going a little further.

00:19:13.614 --> 00:19:15.156
You get to see a lot more.

00:19:15.156 --> 00:19:16.298
We can take you into the ocean.

00:19:16.298 --> 00:19:18.080
That's a big thing, yeah tell me about that.

00:19:18.184 --> 00:19:30.413
So, like today actually we're at 5 o'clock we are taking our employees out on the boat and jet skis, heading to Lee Island so that they can play in the ocean and get some good pictures, and we try to do that a few times during the summer.

00:19:30.413 --> 00:19:31.914
That's our team bonding.

00:19:31.914 --> 00:19:34.136
But riding in the ocean is the fun stuff.

00:19:34.136 --> 00:19:36.398
If you want to jump the waves, go in the ocean and play.

00:19:36.398 --> 00:19:40.647
But you got to be with us because that can obviously get dangerous if you fall off the jet ski in the inlet.

00:19:40.647 --> 00:19:41.672
You got to know how to navigate it.

00:19:41.672 --> 00:19:42.835
So that's what the guided ride is.

00:19:42.835 --> 00:19:45.653
We actually tell people for the guided rides.

00:19:45.653 --> 00:19:52.030
You need to be experienced to go on the guided rides because we're going further and faster it shouldn't be your very first time ever on the water.

00:19:52.050 --> 00:19:53.875
At that point, we ask people if it is your very first time ever on the water.

00:19:53.875 --> 00:19:59.025
At that point, we ask people if it is your very first time ever on the water with a ski.

00:19:59.025 --> 00:20:01.313
We want you to do the freestyle.

00:20:01.313 --> 00:20:09.136
That way you can cruise and get the feel for it at your own speed and pace and some people aren't comfortable with going on a whole big trip and it wears them out.

00:20:09.585 --> 00:20:10.569
So tell me about speed.

00:20:11.025 --> 00:20:13.607
They can go as fast as the jet ski can go, okay.

00:20:13.708 --> 00:20:14.147
Which is.

00:20:14.669 --> 00:20:17.112
Which is roughly around 50.

00:20:17.112 --> 00:20:17.592
50?

00:20:17.592 --> 00:20:19.534
Yeah, 50 to 55.

00:20:19.534 --> 00:20:24.660
It really depends on the rider the rider weight, the water, the water conditions.

00:20:24.779 --> 00:20:25.760
The wind, the weather.

00:20:25.760 --> 00:20:27.623
Yeah, that's right, and that's fast.

00:20:27.864 --> 00:20:28.964
That is fast, that's fast.

00:20:28.964 --> 00:20:31.692
There are jet skis that go faster, but that is not safe.

00:20:31.712 --> 00:20:32.875
I was going to ask that I, but that is not safe.

00:20:32.875 --> 00:20:37.340
I was going to ask that I'm just curious my own knowledge, I didn't know how fast a jet ski will go Faster than you'd ever be comfortable with.

00:20:37.641 --> 00:20:39.637
You know, and on calm lakes, that's fine.

00:20:45.068 --> 00:20:48.631
We took some to calm lakes and I was even like nope, we're good, let's back it on down.

00:20:48.631 --> 00:20:51.393
Okay, yeah, well, good, so I love and well care of.

00:20:51.393 --> 00:20:57.857
So, like we said, a good place to start is to go to the website which is surfcityjetskirentalscom.

00:20:57.857 --> 00:21:03.741
Go there and find out information about your rentals availability and your pricing, because you can make a reservation directly on the website.

00:21:03.821 --> 00:21:05.363
All of our reservations are on our website.

00:21:05.545 --> 00:21:09.790
Someone was vacationing sometime this summer and they already have their vacation dates figured.

00:21:09.790 --> 00:21:11.833
How you encourage them to book.

00:21:11.833 --> 00:21:14.654
That Is a week in advance enough time, definitely, definitely.

00:21:14.815 --> 00:21:15.895
We have people that book.

00:21:15.895 --> 00:21:18.558
You know they book their reservation and they go ahead and book once we're open.

00:21:18.558 --> 00:21:26.036
But as long as you book like if you get down here on Saturday, like most of them do, and you book Saturday, sunday, monday you're going to be able to pick what time you want.

00:21:26.464 --> 00:21:27.807
What do you do about bad weather days?

00:21:28.126 --> 00:21:29.630
Bad weather days are bad weather days.

00:21:29.630 --> 00:21:30.990
We Go home and take a nap.

00:21:31.132 --> 00:21:33.955
Basically, we don, basically we don't see those days often.

00:21:33.996 --> 00:21:37.767
no, we really don't we don't get many rain out days anymore.

00:21:37.767 --> 00:21:38.632
I feel like we used to.

00:21:38.672 --> 00:21:51.911
We used to get like two or three days and they were the best because that was just us two we didn't have employees yeah, we were seven days a week, but no, if it's bad weather basically what we tell people if at the time of your reservation it's bad weather, we're going to reschedule you or cancel you and refund you.

00:21:51.911 --> 00:21:58.502
We tell people please do not worry about the weather, book it, we'll deal with it then, because at the beach it rains for five minutes and then it's beautiful.

00:21:58.502 --> 00:22:00.511
We really do our best to work with people.

00:22:00.511 --> 00:22:10.275
We tell a lot of people don't wait until the last day of vacation to come, because I can't tell you the amount of times it rains on Friday and they're so broken hearted that they didn't get to go jet skiing because they don't have any more time to reschedule.

00:22:10.275 --> 00:22:21.830
No-transcript, I promise you, book it, we'll deal with it.

00:22:21.830 --> 00:22:23.615
We'll move you, we'll cancel you.

00:22:23.615 --> 00:22:26.113
Whatever we got to do, we're going to make it the best for you.

00:22:26.394 --> 00:22:26.634
Okay.

00:22:37.469 --> 00:22:40.896
So you said you has to be there, has to do the paperwork, has to rent it for them.

00:22:40.896 --> 00:22:43.574
14 and 15-year-olds can drive with an adult on board.

00:22:43.574 --> 00:22:45.029
I think it's a learning tool.

00:22:45.029 --> 00:22:48.728
I think it's giving these kids some responsibility when they're out on the water.

00:22:48.928 --> 00:22:50.250
Oh, to put them on the front.

00:22:50.269 --> 00:22:51.971
Yeah, Now the adult on the 14 and 15-year-olds.

00:22:51.971 --> 00:22:56.395
The adult has to be on the jet ski with them, but they actually can operate and I think it's awesome.

00:22:56.395 --> 00:23:07.307
We've watched kids grow up on the jet ski dock that have been coming to us since they were little and they're 14, they get there and they're like we get to drive, and then when they're 16, they're there, they're giving me their ID.

00:23:07.307 --> 00:23:10.913
I don't even have to ask for it because they are taking their own jet ski age.

00:23:11.733 --> 00:23:14.739
What's some other important things that y'all want to tell people right now.

00:23:15.219 --> 00:23:15.940
Just do it Go.

00:23:17.808 --> 00:23:18.210
It's fun.

00:23:18.210 --> 00:23:20.936
The important thing that Houston wants everybody to know is just go do it.

00:23:20.936 --> 00:23:21.925
It's fun, it is.

00:23:22.288 --> 00:23:25.358
We have people tell us every day this is the highlight of our vacation.

00:23:25.358 --> 00:23:29.048
Yes, it overwhelms people because we do have so many rules in place.

00:23:29.048 --> 00:23:30.009
That's okay.

00:23:30.009 --> 00:23:31.752

Surf City Jet Ski & Watersports

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