1988 Correct Craft Air Nautique — Excelsior, MN 55331

A 1988 Correct Craft Ski Nautique at Excelsior, Minnesota — Lake Minnetonka water — asking $11,000 through Skipp's Boat Sales. This is the cheapest honest way into a real inboard tow boat: the 2001 hull that Correct Craft introduced in 1981 and kept in production for years because tournament skiers would not let it die. Twenty feet, a Ford 351 Windsor amidships turning a shaft, and a wake at slalom speed so small it barely counts as evidence the boat passed. In 1988 nobody had heard of wakeboarding; this boat was designed for the skier and nothing else, and forty years on that single-mindedness is exactly what a course skier still pays for.

Be clear about what $11,000 does not buy. No tower, no ballast, no wake to board on without effort, and surfing is out entirely — behind any direct-drive the prop and the exhaust sit exactly where a surfer falls. This is the ski rung of the ladder, not the wake rung. What it does buy is the simplest drivetrain in powerboating and a hull the forums still argue was the best of its era.

The survey list is the standard late-eighties inboard list, and none of it is optional. The 2001 kept wood stringers and floors, unencapsulated outside the bilge — owners on the Correct Craft forums report finding them anywhere from perfect to compost, and the difference is the whole value of the boat. Ethanol is brutal on a 1988 fuel system, so tank, lines and carburetor want eyes on them; so does the stuffing box where the shaft exits. A $11,000 ask leaves room for that homework. A soft floor does not.

If the wake habit in your family points at boards rather than a slalom course, the same money-honesty says start one rung up. The Supra Legacy on this shelf is the multisport version of this idea — twelve years newer, an adjustable wake plate, $16,900 more:

And the rung where the boat is finally built around the rider, not the skier, is the Air Nautique 226 — the same yard seventeen years later, factory ballast and a tower, $24,000 above this ask:

The rest of the tow-boat market at every price sits on the powerboat shelf. But if what you want is the sport that started all of this, at the price of a used jet ski, this is the one to survey first:

Sources: CorrectCraftFan.com forum threads on the 1988 Ski Nautique 2001 and stringer condition; The Hull Truth on late-80s ski boat brands; Wikipedia, "Ski Nautique".