I see all too often, skiers and wake boarders taking unnecessary chances, with the wrong type of tow vessel.
Wakeboard and Ski Boats Are Different
From the outside, it may not seem like boats you can ski behind, and purpose-built ski and wakeboard boats are that much different. But there's one crucial difference — propeller location. Because wakeboarders play much closer to the stern, wakeboarding behind a sterndrive or outboard-powered boat is far more dangerous than one built for the purpose, which are inboard-powered. As you can see from the illustration, a skier in the water is much safer with an inboard-powered boat because of how far under the boat the prop is.
Regardless of where the prop is, any boat that's picking up a skier should have the engine powered off, just in case.