Tricat

Tricat began the way the best small yards do: with a father who wanted to take his children sailing without frightening anyone. Antoine Houdet, a sports-catamaran racer, built himself a little trimaran using the floats of his Alado 18, liked what it did, and in 2002 drew his first real design — the Tricat 22 — with naval architect Jack Michal of the Multiplast office. The yard settled in Plescop, Morbihan, and has spent two decades doing exactly one thing: transportable folding trimarans, designed and built in Brittany, about fifteen boats a year, two hundred hulls in total.

That restraint is the marque. A dozen employees, a range of four — the 6.90 and its new XL evolution, the 8.50, and the flagship 30 — and a clientele the yard keeps by phone rather than by ad budget. Where Corsair industrialized the folding trimaran and Dragonfly gilded it, Tricat domesticated it: boats simple enough for a family slipway afternoon, marine enough for a week down the coast. Our shelf holds the flagship twice — a 2021 Tricat 30 in Cannes and the 2022 "Solauror" in Belgium — a rare chance to cross-read the same modern model at two prices.

The honest notes: a small yard's folding system is its own school — surveys want someone who has seen one, and Plescop itself knows every hull by number, which is worth more than most brochures. Boats appear on the used market rarely and sell on word of mouth, so the two on our shelf are the exception, not the rule. Weigh the type against its rivals at the price guide, and meet the rest of the fleet at the trimarans for sale.