LEO BENTZ
Before there was wakeboarding and wakesurfi ng and wakeskating
and whatever comes next, there was water skiing. Ralph Samuelson
invented the sport on a Minnesota lake in 1922, and learning to get
up on twin skis behind the family boat soon became a waterborne
rite of passage. The beauty of water skiing is that you can do it be-
hind almost any boat, but to ski at the highest levels, you need the
perfect ski boat. And this is where Leo Bentz comes into the picture.
For decades, premier skiers preferred to be pulled behind
fl at-bottomed wooden boats with inboard power; the centered
engine and shallow draft allowed for a steadier pull with a smaller
wake. Seeking a competitive advantage in top-level skiing, Bentz
designed the fi rst fi berglass inboard ski boat in Miami in 1957,
naming it the Ski Nautique. He presented the idea to fellow Florida
boatbuilder Walter C. Meloon of Correct Craft, which had become
famous for building troop transport boats during World War II.
Meloon initially rejected Bentz’s idea, saying (as legend has it) that
he’d never seen a “fi berglass tree.”
Bentz kept working on his Ski Nautique design and reintro-
duced the idea to Meloon in 1961. This time, Correct Craft agreed
to buy the Nautique molds from Bentz and began production. And
thus, in 1961, the 18-foot Ski Nautique, powered by either a 185 hp
or 215 hp Interceptor inboard, sold for up to $3,845. As the original
brochure says, the Nautique’s “special hull design gives an excep-
tionally low wake at jumping and slalom speeds and a perfect wake
for wake tricks at slow speeds.”MODERN MARVEL
SUPER AIR
NAUTIQUE G23
After decades of trying to make the wake as small
as possible, Nautique now builds boats that can
produce the biggest, cleanest wakes for wake-
boarding and wakesurfi ng. The Nautique Surf
System (NSS) produces an epic wave with just the
push of a button, which deploys surf plates that in-
crease the G23’s displacement and help sculpt the
wake. It also has state-of-the-art steering assist
and ballast controls from the touchscreen dash.PHOTOS: COURTESY CORRECT CRAFT (3), ZENON BILAS (MIDDLE LEFT)88 | BOATINGMAG.COM | JUNE 2018