1999 Beneteau Oceanis 321 — New Orleans, LA 70126

A 1999 Oceanis 321 lying at New Orleans, asking $34,900 through Whelton Marine. The design is Groupe Finot's for Beneteau, first built in 1995 and made 848 times: a masthead sloop of 32.6 ft on 11.2 ft of beam, drawing 4.3 ft on a bulbed fin, 9,700 lb all up. The signature is beam carried aft over a shallow, low-ballast keel — volume and stiffness ahead of speed. It also went to charter as the Moorings 321 and Stardust 322, which says what it was drawn for: handled by two, hard to intimidate, cheap to keep.

Two honesty notes. This is the only Oceanis 321 on our shelf, so we cannot say whether $34,900 is keen for the model itself — only where it sits in its band. And we hold no condition note, no survey and no days-on-market for this hull; a 27-year-old production cruiser earns a thorough one.

The band we can place. At $34,900 it is the cheapest boat of its size and vintage in our comparison set: every 2000-or-later monohull we hold near this length asks $42,000 or more, and the only cheaper hulls are smaller and older. It is at the floor of the cruising sailboats under $50k, and nothing in our data explains why.

The nearest like-for-like is the 2003 Catalina 310 at West Palm Beach — the American answer to the same brief, four years newer for $7,100 more:

Stay in the family and the step up is the 2003 Oceanis 331 at Key Biscayne, a foot and a third longer for $15,000 more:

Where the opposite instinct leads, the 1992 Catalina 28 at Worth, Illinois asks $15,900 less:

But for the volume of a 32-footer at the bottom of the band, this is the one to survey first: