How do jet skis and kayaks work in GTA 6?

Small craft turn up in the frames with people aboard, and twice with the minimap on screen, the jet skis at 17:25 and a kayak at 17:28. This page is the jet ski and the kayak as the official material shows them, and the last game’s rules for the one it had.

What the material shows

The clearest moment is at 17:25 of the Extended Look, taken low and from behind: one rider close in the channel on a red and black ski, a second ahead, a third further out to the right, all throwing spray, the sun low and dead ahead and the Vice City skyline on the horizon. The minimap sits in the bottom left corner, which makes this the player’s camera; the jet ski page carries the frame. In Trailer 2 at 2:20.95 a jet ski is clear of the water mid-jump with two riders aboard, a man sitting upright at the bars and a woman behind him with an arm across his chest, and SEASHARK runs along its lime flank in magenta block capitals; a smaller word on the deck is too small to read, and no maker is written anywhere on it.

The kayak is one of the quieter things in the frames we have. A Mount Kalaga press still catches the paddle biting: spray off the blade, an orange hull sitting low, the paddler in a red buoyancy aid over a blue long-sleeved top, a steel truss bridge with a train on it behind and a yellow flood gauge marked in feet at the left of the frame. The hull carries crest in white lower case after a wave mark, which is also the name Rockstar uses in the alt text of its own site, so the Crest Kayak page carries a name confirmed rather than supplied. At 17:28.93 of the Extended Look a green one of the same make is paddled along a city waterway in daylight, a yellow one ahead of it, with a canopied water taxi and a dark-hulled yacht further up the channel and the minimap in the lower left corner.

Two things follow and one does not. Three skis together and two kayaks together suggest both are ordinary transport on this water rather than rarities. The passenger on the Seashark says a jet ski carries two. Whether a kayak is paddled with controls of its own or handled like a small boat, the frames cannot say.

What nobody knows

• Where either comes from: bought, rented, or found at the water.
• Whether a kayak has a paddling system of its own or handles like a boat, and whether it can capsize.
• Whether there are jet ski races.
• Whether a kayak can be stowed or only found at the water.
• Their in-game names beyond Seashark and Crest, and who makes the Seashark.

How Grand Theft Auto V did it

This is the reference, not a prediction. The GTA Wiki lists the Seashark as GTA V’s jet ski, made by Speedophile, which is why others attach that maker to the GTA 6 machine; it seated two, could be bought on the DockTease website for $16,899, and was found for free at the water: four to the left of Del Perro Pier, two north of the Palmer-Taylor power station, three at the White Water Activity Center. A kayak that game did not have: the wiki’s kayak page lists no game before GTA 6, and its small craft were the Dinghy and the Seashark.

What this page becomes on launch day

From 19 November 2026 this guide is rewritten from the release build: where jet skis and kayaks are found, whether they can be bought, how the paddling works and whether the police follow you onto the water, each with the date it was tested. Until then the short answer at the top stands.