Lucidity, did you get it?
I am surpised that the highest bid was just under $18K. I think that in good shape, even in today's moribund sailboat market, it definitely is worth somewhere in the 20s or even 30s.
Very capable vessel built by a company which fell a victim to the economics of the times and the marketplace's unwillingness/inability to pay for quality.
Mariner (NH) was overbuilding them and so had to get an above market
price. As an example, in the early 80s brand new 36ft Catalinas were selling for $40-45K. Comparably equipped new Mariners 36 (from which
hull Mariner 39 was made by extending the
hull 3 feet, otherwise they're pretty much the same quality wise) were selling for $80-100K. And of course without the name-cache of a Hinckley or even a
Sabre they could not fit in with the higher priced crowd. Nor could they afford to compete with Catalinas or Hunters. IMO they were a step or two above Odays, Cals and Pearsons (in themselves very good boats in general) but way above them in
price as they did not have the advantage of being a volume producer nor the backing of any large
money pockets to ride over the rough times.
Too bad the original Mariner
builder, Jack Gogswell, who is still around and relatively young, in his 60s, never ventured back into the boat building business as he could have produced some interesting updated versions.
PS The company folded due to unfortunate set of converging circumstances. A friend of the
builder who ran a charter operation in the
Caribbean ordered on his good word a bunch of M39s for the charter trade, I think seven of them. So Jack started production relying on his friend who eventually could not come up with the finances due to early 80s recession, downturn in the charter trade, etc. And at the time there was no market for those M39s in which they could be
sold for profit quickly.
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