1995 Fountaine Pajot Athena 38 — Saint Augustine, FL 32084

A 1995 Fountaine Pajot Athena 38 at Saint Augustine, Florida, asking $95,000 through The Multihull Company. The Athena was Joubert-Nivelt's charter-era workhorse for the La Rochelle yard — built in the hundreds from the mid-1990s on, four double cabins and a galley-up saloon inside 38.1 ft of length and 20.7 ft of beam. It belongs to the generation before the flybridge: slim hulls, weight watched, sailing rather better than its accommodation plan suggests. A first-year hull, and now thirty-one years old.

Two honesty notes. We hold no other Athena 38 to price this one against, so the ask is unbenchmarked against the model's own market. And our record of the boat carries no condition note, no equipment list, no time on market — assume nothing about the kit until the broker sends it. What is knowable is the type's homework: aluminium water tanks that oxidise, water standing in the keel hooks, forestay sag under load.

On price it sits at the ceiling of the catamarans under $100k rather than among their bargains — the cats we hold at half this money are 30- to 37-footers, while the late-1990s 38-footers ask a third more. Beam and cabins, not youth.

The same $95,000, three years newer: the 1998 PDQ 36 LRC at Georgetown, South Carolina, two feet shorter and built for range rather than charter turnaround.

Where the speed instinct leads, the 1998 John Shuttleworth Ocean Cheetah 37 at Deltaville, Virginia asks the same money for a named designer's light ocean cat instead of a production four-cabin.

Staying at 38 ft while buying three years costs a third more: the 1998 Prout 38 at Diego Martin, Trinidad, $126,873.

But if it is four cabins on a 38-foot bridgedeck at this money you want, this is the one to survey first: