Report ID: 1012 Folder: 11_vehicles Topic scope: Watercraft visible or implied in Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2 and surrounding marketing — speedboats, centre-console fishing rigs, jetskis, airboats, yachts, pontoons — together with the real-world Florida boat culture, drug-trafficking lore, RAGE-engine physics expectations, and probable gameplay use cases.
Where Trailer 1 emphasised neon, beaches and Vice City itself, the second wave of marketing for Grand Theft Auto VI has placed unusual weight on the water. Rockstar's official site describes Jason as having worked "in the Keys doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners", and introduces Brian Heder, a "classic drug runner from the golden age of smuggling in the Keys" still "moving product through his boat yard" (Rockstar Games, 2025). Cal Hampton is shown "snooping on Coast Guard comms" from his couch. Three of the supporting cast are therefore framed entirely around maritime crime, which is the strongest signal yet that boats are not background dressing in GTA VI but a core pillar of the simulation. Trailer 2 itself shows go-fast speedboats throwing rooster-tails through Keys mangroves, a centre-console sportfisher pushing through chop, jetskis cutting across a sandbar party, airboats grazing sawgrass in an Everglades parody region, and superyachts lining the Vice Beach marinas — a clear taxonomy of recreational, commercial and criminal watercraft.
The hero boat of Trailer 2's Keys sequences is a long, narrow, twin-engine planing hull — the cinematic shorthand for Florida smuggling since Miami Vice. Real-world go-fasts derive from Don Aronow's 1960s Cigarette Racing Team designs and use a deep-V fibreglass-and-Kevlar hull, "ranging from 6.1 to 15.2 metres (20 to 50 ft) long, narrow in beam, and equipped with two or more powerful engines, often totalling more than 750 kilowatts (1,000 hp)", capable of "over 80 knots (150 km/h; 92 mph) in calm waters" (Wikipedia, 2026a). The same article notes that these craft are "difficult to detect by radar except on flat calm seas", which is the precise reason the US Coast Guard adopted helicopter interdiction with anti-materiel rifles. Expect Rockstar's parody — likely called the Squallo II or a revived Cigarro — to keep the silhouette intact, lean heavily on the twin-V12 throaty audio profile, and ship with a wanted-level-scaling Coast Guard helicopter response that mirrors the real Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON).
Brian Heder's boat yard implies a working-class fishing fleet, and several shots in marketing materials show 23-to-33-foot centre-consoles with T-tops, outriggers and quad outboards — the unmistakable Boston Whaler / Contender / Yellowfin silhouette. Boston Whaler, headquartered in Edgewater, Florida, manufactures a Montauk-to-Outrage range running from 15.4 ft up to 42.5 ft, with the largest Outrage variants rated for 1,200–1,675 hp on the transom (Wikipedia, 2026b). Crucially, the brand's commercial arm sells "Guardian" and "Justice" variants directly to coast guards worldwide, which means the same hull realistically appears as both civilian rental, drug courier and law-enforcement interceptor. A single in-game model with livery swaps can therefore serve three gameplay roles, which is exactly the kind of asset re-use Rockstar favoured in GTA V's Dinghy and Police Predator.
Trailer 2 lingers on bikini-clad riders carving across turquoise shallows — the Seashark lineage from previous titles, now clearly upgraded to ape the modern Yamaha WaveRunner FX, Sea-Doo RXP-X and Kawasaki Ultra 310. Expect three trim levels: a stand-up sport ski, a luxury two-seater tourer, and a supercharged racer. They will almost certainly be drivable in first-person, will be the cheapest entry-level water vehicle, and will spawn in dense numbers at beach hubs.
Confirmed by Everglades-parody marsh footage, airboats are new to the mainline series at scale. With a flat aluminium hull and an aircraft-style pusher prop in a cage, they glide over sawgrass and inches of water — the only practical way to traverse the Leonida wetlands. This is also where Rockstar's gator AI, hunting minigames and possibly cult/militia encounters will live.
Vice Beach marinas in Trailer 2 are packed with 80-to-150-foot motor yachts in the Sunseeker, Azimut and Feadship idiom. The Galaxy Super Yacht introduced in GTA Online gave Rockstar a content template; GTA VI is widely expected to make purchasable yachts function as mobile penthouses with helipads, jet-ski garages and tender bays, doubling as mission staging points. Boobie Ike's empire and the music industry strand around Only Raw Records (Rockstar Games, 2025) make yacht parties a near-certain social-hub feature.
Often overlooked, the Florida pontoon — Bennington, Harris FloteBote (itself a Brunswick brand alongside Boston Whaler and Sea-Ray, per Wikipedia, 2026b) — is the dominant rental boat across the state's lakes and inland waterways. A pontoon variant fits the Grassrivers and Lake Leonida regions and is the most plausible vehicle for non-criminal player-driven social activity.
Rockstar's marketing copy is unusually explicit about smuggling heritage. Brian Heder is positioned as a survivor of the cocaine-cowboy era — "I hauled so much grass in that plane, I could make the state of Leonida levitate" (Rockstar Games, 2025) — a line that triangulates Cocaine Cowboys, Carl Hiaasen novels, and the Aronow-era Miami where boatbuilders and traffickers shared marinas along Thunderboat Row. The go-fast was the era's defining tool, and its place in pop culture was cemented by Miami Vice both as TV series and 2006 Michael Mann film, where "go-fast boats are used to smuggle drugs for cartels" (Wikipedia, 2026a). GTA VI is therefore leaning into a mythology rather than inventing one: the Keys-to-Bahamas cocaine corridor of the late 1970s and 1980s is the historical bedrock onto which Jason's storyline is grafted.
GTA V (2013) already simulated wake interaction, buoyancy and limited wave coupling on the legacy RAGE pipeline. Thirteen years on and on PS5/Xbox Series hardware, plausible upgrades include:
| Real brand | Likely in-game name | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Cigarette Racing | Squallo II / Cigarro | Smuggling go-fast |
| Boston Whaler Outrage | Whaler / Marquis | Centre-console fisher / Coast Guard Predator |
| Sea-Ray Sundancer | Sea-Spirit | Mid-tier cabin cruiser |
| Yamaha WaveRunner FX | Seashark FX | Premium jetski |
| Sea-Doo RXP-X | Speeder Plus | Sport jetski |
| Sunseeker / Azimut | Aquasun / Marquis Mega | Purchasable superyacht |
| Bennington pontoon | Tropic | Rental party pontoon |
| Diamondback airboat | Glade Skimmer | Everglades airboat |
The watercraft layer of GTA VI looks set to be the most ambitious marine sandbox in the series' history, and arguably in any open-world title. By anchoring the lore in Florida's real smuggling heritage — Aronow's go-fasts, Brunswick's Boston Whaler factory in Edgewater, the Coast Guard's HITRON interdictions — Rockstar is positioned to deliver maritime gameplay with the same density that ground vehicles enjoyed in GTA V. The presence of three water-coded characters in core marketing (Jason, Brian, Cal) is the strongest evidence yet that boats are not optional content but a primary axis of progression.
Rockstar Games (2025) Grand Theft Auto VI — Official Site. Available at: https://www.rockstargames.com/VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026a) Go-fast boat. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-fast_boat (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026b) Boston Whaler. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Whaler (Accessed: 14 May 2026).