2006 pogo pogo 40 s1 — LA GRANDE MOTTE, Hérault

A 2006 Pogo 40 at Marseille, asking $124,200 through UNISAILOR. This is a first-generation Class40 — one of 45 Finot-Conq hulls Pogo Structures built at Combrit between 2005 and 2009, drawn hard against the new class's 40-foot box: 39.96 ft of hull carrying 14.44 ft of beam, everything arranged for one or two people racing an ocean. The yard's signature is exactly that — series-built shorthanded racers, plainly finished, strongly made — and the model proved the idea at once: Pogo 40s took the top two places in the class's first Route du Rhum, the year this hull was launched.

Two honesty notes. There is no sister ship on our shelf to benchmark against, so we cannot say whether $124,200 is keen for a 2006 Pogo 40. And the accommodation is what a class rule wanted, not what a brochure promises.

What the shelf does place is the price: this is the cheapest door into the yard by $110,800 — every other Pogo we hold asks $235,000 or more — while the mid-2000s production cruisers near its length ask $90,000–$100,000. It is a race boat priced over the cruising fleet; it belongs with the racing monohulls. Know which trade you are making.

If the speed draws you but the berths must be real, the 2008 Wauquiez Centurion 40S is the performance-cruiser middle path — a foot longer, two years newer, $24,800 more:

The yard's own answer to that objection is the Pogo 12.50, the Class40 idea translated for cruising — a 2012 example lies in Trinidad at $235,000:

And where the opposite instinct leads, the 2003 Hunter 466 at Pensacola buys six more feet of accommodation for $24,300 less:

But if it is the Class40 itself you are after, nothing else on this shelf does what this boat does — this is the one to survey first: