1988 Kadey-Krogen Kadey-Krogen 42 — San Diego, CA 92106

A 1988 Kadey-Krogen 42 at San Diego, asking $69,000 through Yachtfinders Windseakers — and that number is the whole story, so let us read it properly. The Krogen 42 is the boat that invented the modern passagemaking trawler: James Krogen's full-displacement, single-screw hull, 206 built from 1977, a 135-horsepower Lehman diesel sipping about three gallons an hour at eight knots, better than 2,000 miles of range and closer to 5,000 if you slow to six. Power & Motoryacht crossed an Atlantic on one. Soundings files it under Classics. In this marque, hulls change owners in the $200,000s; the cheapest sisters on the national market start at exactly this ask.

A Krogen 42 at a third of the fleet's usual money is not a typo. It is a work list, and the model's known list is famous enough to price. The screw-down teak decks leak into the core when the bungs and caulk age out, and the topsides under the teak can hide wet filler. The steel fuel tanks went into the hull before the engine did, and their replacement is the invoice Krogen forums speak of in hushed tones. The topsides are cored and can read wet. The windows leak. None of this is scandal — it is the standard forty-year survey of the type, and the trawler forums maintain it like scripture. The arithmetic the buyer runs is honest and simple: cheapest-in-fleet plus the famous refit roughly equals mid-fleet money, except you choose the yard, the schedule and the standard, and you start from a San Diego boat rather than a mystery.

What the same money buys elsewhere makes the choice vivid. Spending $16,505 less buys the coastal version of the two-cabin dream, twin screws and teak included:

Two engines, forty-three feet and a famous American name cost $2,500 less:

And $20,988 more buys twice the speed with a fraction of the reach — the schedule-keeper's answer to the same liveaboard question:

Every other boat on this ladder is a home that floats; this is the one that is also a vehicle for leaving. If that distinction matters to you, the survey — and it will be a long one — starts here:

Sources: Soundings, Classics: Krogen 42; PassageMaker owner review of the Kadey-Krogen 42; Power & Motoryacht, Crossing an Ocean on a Kadey-Krogen 42; Trawler Forum, KK 42 Issues to Look For; boats.com national fleet listings for the model.