NEEL Trimarans NEEL 47

The NEEL 47 is the rung where the floats become bedrooms. Marc Lombard kept everything the smaller 43 is admired for — the owner's suite up on the living level looking forward over the whole platform, the weight carried low and amidships so the boat goes through a seaway instead of over it — and then spent 27 feet of beam putting private guest cabins out in the amas. Cruising World's judges made it Best Full-Size Multihull for 2020 on the strength of the sea trial, and it is the boat that converted a generation of catamaran shoppers: one hull to live in, two to sleep the crew in, one engine to service.

The watch list for the 47 stands at 17 live askings, averaging $675,827, and the shelf we publish runs $550,800 to $749,000 over 2021–2023. Money is only half of what separates one from another; the other half is which side of an ocean the boat is already on. These are built on the French Atlantic coast and sold worldwide, so the fleet divides into hulls still lying where they were commissioned and hulls somebody has already paid to move — and moving one is a real number that the asking price quietly contains. Nearest the source:

And the same model with the delivery already behind it:

The honest notes come from people who have used one. A used-boat review found the engine compartment very damp, with salt and corrosion showing on engine components after nine months, and small cracks in the resin fillets where bulkheads meet the hull — first-morning survey items rather than deal-breakers, but that is where to start. The float cabins that make the 47 work are reached from the deck rather than from inside, and reviewers put their headroom below what a catamaran gives you; the guest head is cramped enough that reviewers describe pulling the steps out to use it. Twenty-seven feet of beam is a phone call to the boatyard before it is a haul-out. And a model this popular with charter has ex-charter boats in it, so the usage history is the first page of the survey, not the last. If the budget flinches, the 43 keeps the living and gives up the cabins in the floats; if it swaggers, the 51 is where the whole idea started. The rest of the fleet argues it out at the trimarans for sale.