1990 Corsair Marine CORSAIR 27 — Emsworth, England

A 1990 Corsair 27 at Emsworth, England, asking $46,585 through Multihull World. This is Ian Farrier's F-27, the design that made the folding trimaran mainstream and the boat Corsair Marine was founded to build: 27 ft of main hull spreading to 19.1 ft of beam, folding to road width, about 450 built between 1986 and 1996, inducted into the American Sailboat Hall of Fame in 2004. A 1990 hull sits mid-run, at the production peak.

Two honesty notes. This is the shelf's only Corsair 27, so there is no sister ship to benchmark against. And the listing carries no condition or inventory detail; on a 36-year-old boat built around a set of folding beams, the survey is the verdict, not the year.

What the shelf does place is the price: $46,585 is top money for the early nineties — the three tris we hold from 1992–1994 ask $21,900 to $35,271 — while newer Corsairs, 2002 to 2013, bracket it at $39,500 to $56,900. The ask is a bet on condition we cannot confirm from here; it prices the archetype of the trailerable trimarans shelf at the confident end.

The pointed comparison is its replacement: the 2002 Corsair 28 at Long Beach, California — twelve years newer, a foot and a half longer — asks $44,000, $2,585 less than this boat, though an ocean from Emsworth:

Nearer to hand, Quorning's rival folder is the value play: a 1993 Dragonfly 800 lies at Hythe, three years newer and a foot shorter, at $11,314 under:

And where the instinct runs to newer build rather than more boat, the 2013 Corsair Dash 750 MkII — three feet shorter, twenty-three years newer — asks $56,900, a $10,315 step up:

Each of those descends from this design. If it is the original folding trimaran you are after, the shelf holds exactly one — this is the boat to survey first: