2001 Tigé 21i — Blythe, California 92225

A 2001 Tigé 21i at Blythe, California — Colorado River country — asking $29,500 through Pop Yachts. Tigé came out of the nineties with one of the best slalom hulls in the business and a heresy called TAPS: a transom plate that changes the hull's running attitude at the push of a button. Plate down, the bow drops and the 21i planes flat into a faint slalom wake; plate up, the hull squats and plows out a wakeboard wake at boarding speeds. One direct-drive boat, two sports, no ballast bags in sight — in 2001 that was the cleverest trick on the lake, and it is still the reason a 21i costs real money while other 2001 ski boats do not.

The case against lives in the same acronym. TAPS is a hydraulic system with a modified control handle, and the Tigé owners' forum is a long archive of shorted TAPS controls, plates stuck after the reservoir ran low on fluid, and gauges lying about where the plate actually sits. None of it is expensive by marine standards, but a 21i with dead TAPS is just a decent direct-drive with a fixed plate — the party trick is the price premium, so test every position of it on the water before money moves. Blythe adds the desert clause: river boats lead easy mechanical lives and brutal cosmetic ones, so read the gelcoat and upholstery as a sun-exposure log.

Priced against its neighbors, the 21i sits $1,600 above the boat it spent 2001 competing with — the Supra Legacy, which answered the same skier-and-boarder question with a conventional wake plate:

Above it, the 2005 Air Nautique 226 makes the wakeboard half of the promise with 820 pounds of factory ballast and a tower instead of hull attitude, for $5,500 more:

And at the top of this shelf's ladder, the Centurion Enzo SV240 stops compromising entirely — a surf-first 24-footer for $10,500 above this ask:

The whole tow-boat spread lives on the powerboat shelf. But if the family genuinely splits between a course skier and a boarder and one trailer has to keep both civil, the clever plate is still the cheapest peace treaty going — survey this one first, finger on the TAPS button:

Sources: TigéOwners.com forum threads on TAPS controls, stuck plates and a new-to-me 2000 21i; iboats thread on common Tigé checks; boats.com review of the TAPS2 system.