The sun rises over Evans Point and scatters silver across the quiet waters of Agua Hedionda’s back bay. A muffled boat floats out onto the glassy stillness and with a thumbs up from a skier on the dock, it hits the gas, breaks the calm and another perfect summer day begins on Carlsbad’s busiest lagoon. The memories of such days are as steady as the water lapping the shore as the sun sinks low and hulls are rinsed off at end of day.

This summer it is wave runners and wakeboarders out for fun, but in the ’60s it was water skiers on wooden skis and the ’70s and ’80s added Jet skiers. According to a kid who grew up on the lagoon, there was a time between Fox’s Snug Harbor and Whitey’s Landing (near Bristol Cove) when each were putting about 100 boats a day in the water.

From the air it looked like a Where’s Waldo drawing. So in the early ’60s, Harry Walton and Ed Urbanski, a couple of Carlsbad’s finest under Police Chief Max Polkowski, were sent out on lagoon patrol. “Our first boat was a 36-foot landing craft we got from Army surplus for $500,” Walton said. We used it for a year and sold it to the City of San Diego. They put it in Miramar lake (reservoir) and it sank. Our second boat was a 24-foot Captain’s gig, also from Army surplus.” The water police objective? “To keep everyone going counter-clockwise.”

Only one or two citations would be written on any given weekend, but Walton said, “It was terrible. I’d go through a full first-aid kit every Saturday and Sunday and we’d send three or four people to the emergency room.” Here is where Walton said his 15 minutes of fame came. Walton thought a flag—similar to the ones divers used—might work instead of the skier raising his hand. The observer in the boat would raise the red flag to signal a down skier.

Did it work? Soon the higher-ups were concerned. Walton said, “The Division of Small Craft Harbors came down to see why we weren’t sending accident reports anymore.” Always on the cutting edge, Carlsbad passed a city ordinance requiring use of the flag in 1960. The State of California caught up later and now the flag is standard practice for skiers and wakeboarders.

Another Carlsbad innovation was a small, flat, bottom speedboat designed by the Litchfield brothers. Outboards would be ousted from the lagoon and drag races would ensue. Walton said they could reach 100 mph sometimes. It is hard to imagine that without anyone hitting the mud flats, but low on the water, they were a thing of powerful beauty.

For all the action in the water Rusty Sharman said, “John Fox ran the landing like a ship. He’d wear Navy dress whites and ring bells every hour. He was quite a character.” Walton said of Fox, “He was an ex-Navy chief” and the American flag went up in the morning and down in the evening punctually and ceremoniously.

Before Carlsbad High School offered surfing or beach volleyball for P.E., it offered water skiing as a summer school class. Many students began the summer with a wobbly, double ski start and ended with a single ski dock start. The teacher and boat driver was the newly elected city councilman, Bud Lewis.

The biggest problem with water skiing has always been the need for driver and skier to read each other’s minds. It’s hard to holler over an Evinrude. What if the skier could drive himself? Or, as Clayton Jacobsen II conceptualized, what if you could motorcycle on water? Jacobsen made a prototype Jet Ski of aluminum by 1965. Instead of an outboard he went inboard with an internal pump-jet and later made the hull out of fiberglass. By the early ’70s Jacobsen had sold the patent to Kawasaki with Jet Ski becoming its official name. Kawasaki needed to do some R & D and needed a water-filled laboratory.

Meanwhile, back at the lagoon, Rusty Sharman grew up a stone’s throw from the water, “next to the Fox’s house.” His dad had a bait shop at the landing. Dave and Rolf Sammons came with their dad who raced speedboats. (Fox eventually sold the landing and then Fred and Lee Lathrop took up the lease from its LA owner). They had fished the lagoon, driven boats, skied, kneeboarded and tinkered with engines at water’s edge. Cindy Lathrop said, “It was a family place. I remember gathering around the fire ring after skiing all day. January 1 was a big day with polar bear patches. Weekends would be packed with trailers all the way up the hill. Geez, I think I skied before I could run. I remember my dad running along the beach pulling me.”

When Kawasaki arrived with its prototypes, they found willing test pilots in these 12- and 13-year-olds. They would ride for gas and Kawasaki would pepper them with questions that Sharman said were “mostly about improvements and safety issues. They ran a pretty extensive test program. I remember one guy whose sole job was to test the stretch on rubber belts,” after a few hours in the water.

A few years into it, Kawasaki’s white-coats rented a ballroom in an Oceanside hotel and invited “about 10 families who frequented the lagoon to come and answer questions.” Sharman remembers that there were families so often at the lagoon they became a sort of extended family. “There were the Lathrops, of course, and the Whiteings, the Cockrans—Randy Cockran was the first paid test-rider—the Egdahls, the Westes, the Leiths, the Turners.” And Cindy Lathrop was not a bad Jet skier for a girl!

Kawasaki came out with its first model in 1973 to limited production. It was a stand-up with a 400cc, two-stroke engine. They came out with a mass production, JS400-A, in 1976. Not only did these kids help Kawasaki successfully develop this new recreational vehicle, but the Jet Ski helped develop some of their futures.

Something in a man wants to take anything that is plain fun and make a competition out of it. As the Jet Ski became commercially successful, Jet Ski races began to spring up in our lagoon and beyond. The Sammons, Sharman, Brian Bendix and those who didn’t realize they’d been practicing were set to take the field.

“It was like a moto-cross track in the water,” Sharman said. He made the All Southern California team sponsored by Snug Harbor Ski Hut. Dave Sammons said there were different races: “Stock and modified skis, and in the early days there were weight classes.” Both big boys and standouts for the CHS wrestling team, they both added Jet Ski accolades next to their wrestling trophies. “The first Jet Ski race was at Mission Bay in 1977. The first race in Carlsbad was at the harbor in ‘78,” he said.

But Jet Ski racing, like NASCAR, is a team effort. When the weight classes were dropped they became mechanics on the crew. Along with Brian Bendix and his brother Rolf, Sammons said, “Those were some good days. We traveled all over the country.” In the early ’80s Transworld Recreation had taken over the landing and Sammons was on their team until he started his own company. Dave’s passion was in how the engines worked. He designed the first fuel injector for the Jet Ski.

Jacobsen designed both a stand-up and sit-down version of the Jet Ski initially. He had originally tried to sell his idea to Bombardier (a snowmobile maker, Ski Doo to Sea Doo) as a sit-down. When that didn’t pan out, he went to Kawasaki with the stand-up. The stand-up design is more difficult to master, but when it became commercially successful, Kawasaki, Yamaha and others began marketing various designed personal watercraft (PWC). They also upped the power. Kawasaki’s latest is the Jet Ski Ultra 250x, with a 250 horsepower, four-stroke, supercharged engine.

Jet Ski racing reached its zenith by the late ’80s. Sharman said, “For some reason, as the sit-downs became more successful, racing declined.” There are still Jet Ski races, but nothing on the scale of those early days. Sharman remembers the Olympic Long Beach Marine Stadium packed with spectators. Or one world final in Lake Havasu. “There were 1000 Jet Skis all started at once and the smoke was almost unbearable.” That smoke has also stalled the sport. Many areas only allow clean running, late model PWC. Stand-ups can still be ridden in California, but can no longer be sold in California.

While most guys were racing Jet Skis, Randy Laine was sneaking one under the freeway, the train trestle, 101 and out into the open ocean. Laine was a surfer and he had to get the thing out into the waves. He rode, crashed and jumped the waves at Tamarack. He was an innovator of tow-in surfing and freestyle Jet Skiing. Like freestyle snow skiing, this is not a first-guy-over-the-line event; it is a judged event. The winner catches more air and demonstrates more insanity—with technique—than the second place finisher. Laine’s nickname in this world is “Father of Freeriding.” (Check out clickoncarlsbad.com’s editorial features for Laine’s entire story).

Laine is still sponsored in this extreme sport. Sammons still builds engines for folks in his garage. Sharman works for North County Jet Ski. It has been rumored that Tony Finn, a pioneer of wakeboarding in the ’90s was sighted a time or two on his “Skurfer” at Snug Harbor. But the halcyon days for the lagoon were those three decades of the ’60s to the ’80s. Some have said insurance and permit laws cut into the fun. Some say rules and strictures have squeezed the PWC industry. Whatever the reason, an era seems to have past. “Those were magical days,” Sharman mused. “There are a lot of great memories down there,” Sammons said. “It was a unique place for awhile,” Walton sighed, then added, “When the sun went down and the water glassed off, it was the most wonderful water skiing in the world.”

Engines and equipment have surely changed, but Agua Hedionda has not. Jet Skis can still be rented. Wakeboarding can be learned. Innovations are waiting. The sunrise still spills silver across the surface and the wind dies every evening leaving the stillness lingering with possibilities. •