1997 Gemini 105M — Kemah, TX 77565

A 1997 Gemini 105M at Kemah, Texas, asking $49,900 through Murray Yacht Sales. Tony Smith's Annapolis yard built more than 1,100 of the 105 — the best-selling cruising catamaran America has produced — and the reason sits in two numbers: 33.5 ft of hull carrying just 14.11 ft of beam. Narrow for a cat, deliberately. It fits a standard monohull slip, and with the boards and kick-up rudders raised the boat floats where a keelboat cannot follow. The 105 was drawn for the Intracoastal and the Bahamas banks rather than the Southern Ocean, and has never pretended otherwise.

Two things we do not know. We hold no second 105, so there is no sister ship to price this one against — and our design file carries the later 105 Mc name for the whole line, though a 1997 hull predates that revision. Nothing in our file speaks to this hull's condition either; at twenty-nine years old, that is the surveyor's work.

What the shelf does place is the band. On the catamarans under $100k shelf only three boats ask less than this one, and the next boat above it jumps to $87,500 — a $37,600 step. It clears the cruising sailboats under $50k line by $100.

One of those three cheaper boats is the same yard's earlier answer, the 1983 Gemini 31/3000 at Brick, New Jersey:

Where the opposite instinct leads, the 1985 Prout Snowgoose 37 at Luperón, Dominican Republic buys three and a half more feet and an offshore reputation for $10,900 less, delivery attached:

The upgrade is the yard's own successor, the 2013 Gemini Legacy 35 at Green Cove Springs, Florida — the 105 redrawn for the production mainstream:

But for a shoal-draft cat at slip-width beam under fifty thousand dollars, this is the one to survey first: