1985 Prout Snowgoose 37 — Luperon, DO

A 1985 Prout Snowgoose 37 at Luperón, Dominican Republic, asking $39,000 through MarineSource. Prout built catamarans at Canvey Island in Essex, and the Snowgoose — launched 1978, built until 1986 — carried the yard's argument furthest: 37 ft on 15 ft of beam, the mast stepped well aft behind a small mainsail and a big genoa, lines led back so one pair of hands works the rig. Nobody calls a Snowgoose fast. The design is known for the other thing — a record of ocean crossings and circumnavigations few production cats of any era match.

We hold no condition record for this hull and have not seen it, so at forty-one years old the survey does the talking: bridgedeck and bulkhead bonding, chainplates, rudder gear, every system's age. It has been listed 71 days and is carried by three brokers.

The benchmark is other 30-something cruising cats, not another Snowgoose, so read $39,000 against the type. It sits low in the catamaran band, where price tracks a hull's age more than the boat: age for money, and a boat already in the Caribbean rather than one you must take there. It belongs with the catamarans under $100k, and unlike much of that band it earns the word bluewater.

The same yard's later answer is the Prout 38 — a 1998 at Diego Martin, Trinidad, thirteen years newer and three times the money:

For $10,900 more than the Snowgoose, the 1997 Gemini 105Mc at Kemah, Texas trades three and a half feet for a boat a decade younger, already in US waters:

Where the instinct runs modern rather than proven, the 1995 Fountaine Pajot Athena 38 at Saint Augustine asks $56,000 more for a foot more boat:

But if it is the Prout record you are buying, this is the one to survey first: