1988 Chris-craft Catalina 426 — Hendersonville, TN 37075

A 1988 Chris-Craft 426 Catalina at Hendersonville, Tennessee, asking $66,500 — forty-three feet of aft-cabin motoryacht that has spent its life on Old Hickory Lake, which for a gas-engined 1988 hull is the kindest biography available. The design is older than its badge: the molds began life in 1971 as the Uniflite 42 Double Cabin, a hull with a reputation for smooth riding, and Chris-Craft bought them and relaunched the boat in 1985, enlarging the flybridge in 1986 to make the 426. Under the name on the transom is a shape that two builders and two decades kept in production because it worked.

What it is inside: two large cabins, two heads, a down galley with a generous dinette, and a saloon in the middle sized by a 14-foot-9 beam and fifteen tons of displacement. The guides of the era credit the Catalina series with solid construction and thoughtful layouts, and it remains a favorite among liveaboards. The counter-evidence comes from the same era's build sheet. The hull and transom are solid fiberglass — good — but the decks are wood-cored and the stringers are wood encased in glass, and Chris-Craft in the 1980s was casual about sealing deck penetrations: owners report wet coring around stanchions and cleats, and stringers debonding where water found its way in. The freshwater life helps; it does not absolve. Both stories — the solid old campaigner and the wood in the sandwich — are settled by one afternoon with a moisture meter and a sharp-eyed surveyor below the waterline of the bilge.

Its neighbors on this ladder argue usefully. The same two-cabin promise, built in Taiwan with teak instead of a famous name, costs $14,005 less:

For $2,500 more, the question changes entirely: one engine, eight knots, and a hull that has crossed oceans:

And thirteen years newer, with diesels likely and a second helm certain, asks $23,488 more:

For a freshwater aft-cabin classic wearing the most famous name in American powerboats, the file starts here:

Sources: PowerBoat Guide (Chris-Craft 425/426/427 Catalina, 1985–90); Boatered owner thread on the Catalina 426; Chris-Craft owner forums on era deck coring and stringer construction.