Boat Town sells boats and offers monthly storage for boats and recreational vehicles.[/caption]

Boat Town, co-owned by Karen and Clayton Raven, sells new and preowned family and ski boats.[/caption]

Co-owners Clayton and Karen Raven are the second generation of a family that has operated Boat Town, a family and ski boat shop, in the Austin area since the 1960s.

The husband-and-wife team moved the family-run boat shop to South Lamar Boulevard in 1991 after the original Lake Austin Boulevard location burned down, Clayton said. The Southwest Austin location, already owned by the Raven family as a separate boat store, became the new Boat Town.

For the past 12 years, Boat Town has been featured on Boating Industry magazine’s Top 100 Dealers list, Clayton said. Karen said stores are ranked based on factors including customer satisfaction, years of operation, profitability and employee satisfaction.

Clayton said Boat Town’s location is in close proximity to Hwy. 290 and Hwy. 183, which he described as feeder roads to Hill Country lakes. The store is also close to Lake Austin, Karen said.

“We like this side of town because we get Houston traffic coming through here,” Clayton said.

Karen added that the store’s location also allows it to serve customers from San Antonio and near the U.S. and Mexico border.

The shop at Boat Town carries an array of surfboards, coolers, life jackets and other merchandise.[/caption]

Boats for sale and palm trees occupy the front of the store’s lot. Indoors are more boats, surfboards, life jackets and assorted merchandise. And in the back are more boats for sale, both new and preowned.

Other services at Boat Town include parts and repairs, and monthly boat and recreational vehicle storage.

“We are a full-service boat dealership,” Karen said.

What is wakesurfing?

Inside Boat Town is a shop that sells coolers, life jackets and other boat accessories. On the walls are surfboards and wakeboards.

“Wakesurfing is the new, hot watersport right now,” Boat Town co-owner Karen Raven said. “There was water-skiing, then wakeboarding and now wakesurfing.”

Raven said surfers ride wakes created by special surf boats. She added that wakesurfers can be spotted on the Colorado River along Lake Austin Boulevard. The surfers are not towed by boat.