2018 Lagoon 42

A 2018 Lagoon 42 lying in Martinique, asking $323,892 through NETBOAT. The model is the modern catamaran's common denominator — VPLP hulls under Patrick Le Quément's styling, in build since 2016 and past a thousand delivered, Cruising World's full-size multihull of the year for 2017. The brief was volume that still sails: 22.6 ft of beam on 42.5 ft of hull, the mast stepped well aft, a boat drawn to carry a household and stay manageable for a couple.

Two honesty notes. We hold no second Lagoon 42 to benchmark the ask against — an odd gap for a thousand-hull model, so the price cannot be checked against sisters. And Martinique is charter country; the pack says nothing of this boat's history, so neither will we — that question belongs to the survey.

What the shelf does place is the band. The modern cats beside it — 2017 to 2020, 39 to 44 ft — ask $340,200 to $489,000, and this boat is the cheapest of that company; the previous-generation Lagoons cluster at $140,000–$190,000. It sits squarely in the charter-size 40–46 ft band, the bracket this model did most to standardize.

The nearest door is on the same island: the 2017 Nautitech 40 at Le Marin is the other school of catamaran — aft helms, slimmer hulls — a year older, three feet shorter, $16,308 more:

If the pull is more boat rather than a different one, the 2018 Fountaine Pajot Hélia 44 Evolution at Annapolis is the same-year step up in size, a foot and a half longer for $76,008 more:

And where the opposite instinct leads, the yard's own back catalog is the value lane — the 2004 Lagoon 410 S2 at Kemah runs the same brief a generation earlier for $133,893 less:

But a thousand owners chose this drawing over the alternatives for a reason — this is the one to survey first: