Speed Boat Adventures offers Adrenaline with Unique San Diego, CA Views

Story, photos/video by Cassie Hepler

Sure you’ve seen all of San Diego, CA by foot and views every single other person has seen and photographed relentlessly. But what about rolling up in the water right next to some stinky sea lions and cruising underneath the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier? Now that’s a unique experience at Speed Boat Adventures which also offers a side of adrenaline to boot!

Speed Boat Adventures offers a 13-mile (20km) tour at various speeds around the San Diego Harbor available five times a day. We chose the sunset spot as we wanted those pink hues captured on film for forever. They ask you to arrive 20-30 minutes before your scheduled departure time so we hauled ass from where we were lounging at Pacific Beach, CA. It turned out we didn’t have to hurry at all as the rest of our group was hella late. But we did manage to find street parking (free after 6 p.m.) and since their parking lot was rented out for an event, we lucked out even more as the neighbor Sheraton San Diego Marina had some wickedly high parking fees. We did however enjoy a nice (needlessly) gobbled down late lunch with excellent views right beforehand at Panorama Bar & Grill.

Before you get sad that this is only in San Diego, there are other locations too like St. Petersburg and Miami, Florida, Charleston, S.C., and Los Angeles and San Francisco coming soon! They also offer private boat tours for those loners out there too. But Before you start zooming through the water, we had our safety orientation to review the boating basics, rules of the water, hand signals and ever so sexy legally required life vests.

Getting later in the day at San Diego Marina, to the right is a little deli and ice cream snack shop for a quick nosh before boarding.

So many boats with fun names, my fave was “Whatever…” at San Diego Marina.

Looking out toward the sun at San Diego Marina.

We get a little visual map guide and tutorial before we set “sail” at San Diego Marina.

And soon we are taught how to load ourselves inside to begin our San Diego Speed Boat Adventures.

All the “ducks” in a row at San Diego Speed Boat Adventures, the marina gate is locked so only those with a key can get though.

Our boat is yellow and pretty basic so nothing falls in our out at San Diego Speed Boat Adventures.

Finally we get a move on at San Diego Speed Boat Adventures and inch our way out of the marina at a snail’s pace. At this point, I am driving the boat and we are able to weeble wobble switch off later on while on the water.

San Diego, CA city to the left with San Diego Speed Boat Adventures once we get further out of the marina.

Moving on, we get a change of color as the sun moves down at San Diego Speed Boat Adventures.

Speeding toward the city! Just kidding, the kelp was out of control that evening and kept jamming one poor speedboat motor with San Diego Speed Boat Adventures.

Pirate boats abound with San Diego Speed Boat Adventures!

The tip of the India star, better seen in the video with San Diego Speed Boat Adventures.

I might have taken a ton of sunset shots with San Diego Speed Boat Adventures.

Eventually after getting ourselves stuck in kelp, we switch seats and MoVernie.com takes the wheel, which is a workout to drive in itself with San Diego Speed Boat Adventures.

Some of the most memorable views included Navy ships, aircraft carriers, the Coronado Bridge, Star of India, the historic ships of the Maritime Museum, the cruise ship terminal, Seaport Village, the downtown skyline and all the wildlife who call the San Diego Harbor home. We had some extra stops due to clusters of kelp reigning havoc on one poor speedboat and a little bit of radio problems but otherwise it was smooth sailing! And no, your butt doesn’t hurt magically and we barely got wet. Those wave jumps are priceless fun too! You can stash your things in the office cubicle after you sign your life away on an iPad tablet so there’s really no excuses… except per boat weight limit of 450 lbs (205kgs). You can even squeeze an adventurous child in the middle if you like up to 50 lbs (22kgs). And no experience or boating license required, it was my first time driving a speedboat and I killed it! Here’s us cruising back into the San Diego Marina for our last speedboat moments.