Astus Boats

Astus Boats started in 2004 with a simple observation: the folding trimaran had been industrialized, gilded, domesticated — but never made cheap. Jean-Hubert Pommois's answer was to skip the folding entirely. Astus amas ride on telescoping tubes that slide in for the road and out for the water in minutes — no folding linkage, nothing to swing, little to wear. The first 20.1 launched in 2005; hull building moved in-house to Brec'h, Brittany, in 2011; well over four hundred boats have left the shop since, from beach-sized day-sailers to the 24.

Where Corsair industrialized the folding trimaran and Tricat domesticated it, Astus stripped it to the sum: the least money that buys three hulls, a trailer hitch and real speed. The recent generation, drawn with the VPLP office, keeps the sliding-tube idea under a sharper wardrobe. Scout watches five on the market today, from $34,452 to $71,280 — and holds the full file on two: a 2020 Astus 20.5 lying in Brec'h itself, a boat for sale in the town that built it, and a 2023 22.5 Sport in Malta at the top of the band.

The honest notes: these are coastal machines — camp-cruising comfort, not an offshore interior, and the smaller models are day-sailers full stop. Two of the five ads on the watched market are the yard's own "ex-works, on order" slots rather than used boats, so the true secondhand choice is thinner than the count suggests. What the type costs to run is in the price guide; the rivals fold rather than slide at Tricat and Corsair Marine; the rest of the fleet lives at the trimarans for sale.