NEEL Trimarans NEEL 51

The 51 came first. Before Marc Lombard drew the two smaller boats, Joubert and Nivelt gave NEEL its fourth trimaran and the one that made the argument stick — European Yacht of the Year in multihulls for 2018, Multihull of the Year in the same season. Everything the smaller boats ration, the 51 simply has: a master suite up on the bridgedeck, cabins in the centre hull with their own heads, more accommodation out in the floats, and about six and a half feet of headroom wherever you happen to be standing. The structure is a foam-cored sandwich infused in one piece with ring frames through the middle hull, and it carries enough waterline that reviewers treat 200-plus-mile days as the routine rather than the good one.

We track 6 live 51s, at an average asking of $791,020, and the shelf we publish runs $625,118 to $949,000 over 2017–2022. A boat at this money changes hands slowly and the ones that surface are strung right across the production run, so a buyer here is rarely choosing between two of the same thing: the spread is model year and equipment far more than it is condition. The boats worth reading closely, then, are the ones furthest apart in model year: the middle of this market prices itself off them. The early end of the run:

A 2022, five seasons further along that run, is a different purchase entirely:

The honest notes are about size, and about having one of everything. A single engine and a single rudder mean the 51 does not pivot in a marina the way a twin-screw catamaran does — reviewers say so plainly, and it is the trade the whole range makes: one engine to service, one engine to manoeuvre on. One owner, seven thousand miles into the boat, reports more weather helm than they want — eight to ten degrees of rudder on a broad reach and again upwind in a breeze, and raking the mast forward did not move it. Visibility from the helm is restricted under the headsail, as it is on the smaller boats. And at 29 feet of beam the list of marinas that will take you shortens, the yard bill scales with the width, and short-handed begins to mean athletic: two people can sail this boat, but they cannot manhandle it. Beneath it the 47 keeps most of the living for a good deal less boat to pay for, and the 43 compresses the same idea onto one floor. The whole three-hulled congregation gathers at the trimarans for sale.