2017 NEEL 51 — Nantes, Loire Atlantique, FR

A 2017 NEEL 51 at Canet-en-Roussillon, asking $625,118 through A&C Yacht Brokers. This is a first-year hull of the La Rochelle yard's breakout model: 51 feet on a 29-foot beam, the accommodation gathered into the central hull, cockpit and saloon run together on one level — NEEL trademarked a word, Cockloon, for the arrangement — and the design took the multihull class of European Yacht of the Year 2018, the season after this hull went afloat. NEEL Trimarans' pitch is a trimaran that lives like a cruising catamaran; the 51 is the model that made the argument stick.

We hold two 51s, and this is the cheap one by a distance: the other is a 2022 at Monastir asking $949,000 — $324,000 more for five years. Two plain facts against this hull. It is a first-year boat, and it has sat 418 days in the hands of three brokers — a boat the market has inspected and, so far, left. The price concedes as much: $625,118 lands inside the NEEL 47 band — the two 47s we hold ask $550,800 and $749,000 — so the 51's length now costs 47 money.

The sister to benchmark against is that 2022 boat in Tunisia:

If the budget is the fixed point, the 2021 NEEL 47 at La Rochelle asks $74,000 less, four years newer one size down:

And where the catamaran instinct leads, $549,000 buys a 2022 Lagoon 42 at Marina del Rey, five years newer and nine feet shorter:

But no other door into a 51 opens this cheap, and a survey settles the 418-day question either way — this is the one to look at first: