Almost faded into the woodwork....just one more hopefully.
Here is one example of a state's view on admiralty law, California is a another state big on recreational boating cases winding up in maritime court.
https://www.bluesteinlawoffice.com/...-maritime-law-to-pleasure-boats-and-jet-skis/
The general maritime law of the United States, which was once reserved for governing the maritime commerce of transporting cargoes and passengers over navigable waters, is now uniformly accepted as being applicable to recreational boaters using the navigable waterways of South Carolina. Admiralty law as compared to land based law has its own unique laws, regulations, standards, customs, actions and civil procedural rules. In addition, there are many South Carolina recreational boating laws that may supplement admiralty law.
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Recreational+boating+accidents:+Which+law+applies?-a077608232
Admiralty jurisdiction
To fall within federal admiralty jurisdiction and the general maritime law, a tort must meet a "locality" test and a two-prong "nexus" test. While providing no bright lines, these tests should enable practitioners to determine, in most cases, whether a case will "sound in admiralty."
The locality test requires that a tort occur on "navigable" waters. To be navigable for purposes of admiralty jurisdiction, a waterway must be usable as a highway for interstate commerce.(3) Ongoing or potential intrastate commerce does not confer admiralty jurisdiction.(4)
Accordingly, one-state waterways that connect to neither the open sea nor an interstate waterway are not navigable, nor are those that are usable only for recreational interstate travel.
In practice, this means that open seas and waterways actually used for interstate commerce are navigable as a matter of law. Whether other waterways are navigable for purposes of admiralty jurisdiction--that is, whether the waterway could be used for interstate commerce--is a question of fact.(5) If an accident did not occur on navigable waters as defined here, state law will control.
For accidents that do occur on navigable waters, federal admiralty jurisdiction will exist and general maritime law will control if the activities underlying the event have a sufficient nexus with traditional maritime activities. To meet the two-prong nexus requirement, the incident must have posed a "potential hazard to maritime commerce" and arisen "out of activity that bears a substantial relationship to traditional maritime activity."(6)
To satisfy the first prong, an event need not have actually disrupted maritime commerce. It is enough if the accident or event had the potential to do so.
Because all that is needed is potential disruption, few maritime accidents will fail to satisfy this requirement. Events that might have resulted in rescue or salvage operations; that might have left debris, pollution, or damaged vessels in the water; or that in any other way might have impeded the passage of commercial vessels, would all have the potential to disrupt maritime commerce.
The second prong of the nexus test--requiring that a tort arise "out of an activity that bears a substantial relationship to traditional maritime activity"--rules out few, if any, boating accidents. Because the U.S. Supreme Court has held that a boat docked for storage and maintenance was engaged in traditional maritime activity,(7) "it is difficult to conceive of anything that a boat could do in the water which would not qualify as a traditional maritime activity."(8)
Most accidents involving PWC are also likely to be deemed to have a sufficient nexus with traditional maritime activity to fall within admiralty jurisdiction.(9)