1999 Contour Yachts Contour 34 Sc — Detroit Michigan

A 1999 Contour 34 SC at Detroit, Michigan, asking $78,000. Cole Beadon drew the boat for Contour Yachts of Ontario, and its arithmetic is still the point of it: 33.99 feet of hull, 4,850 pounds of displacement, a sail-area-to-displacement ratio of 37.4 — dinghy numbers under a boat with a cabin. The swing wings bring the sailing beam back to 12.6 feet, the only reason a 34-footer of this kind fits an ordinary slip. It is a folding ocean trimaran in the strict sense: the fold is structural, not a concession.

This is the second Contour on our shelf, and the first time the model has had a sister to be measured against. The measurement does not flatter it. The other 34 SC is the same model year and asks $65,000 — this one asks $13,000, a fifth, more. The seller's word for the condition is "excellent"; we have not surveyed it, and the ask has stood 145 days. Whatever carries the premium — kit, a refit, low hours — should be established before an offer, not after.

Among trimarans under $100,000, that ask also buys hulls newer and longer. The sister is the first call: same year, same yard, $13,000 less, on the Gulf Coast rather than the Great Lakes:

Where budget matters more than model, the 2003 Corsair 36 in France asks $78,424: four years newer and nearly five feet longer for the same money, with a class fleet behind it and an ocean in the way:

And where the instinct runs the other way, the 2002 Corsair 28 at Long Beach is the cheap door into the same folding idea at $44,000:

None of the three folds a 34-foot cruising interior; if that is the requirement, price it against the sister and survey this one: