beneteau first sailboat

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Beneteau First 36, Sailing World 2023 Boat of the Year

• By Dave Reed
• December 16, 2022

Sailing World Magazine’s  annual Boat of the Year tests are conducted in Annapolis, Maryland, following the US Sailboat Show. With independent judges exhaustively inspecting the boats on land and putting them through their paces on the water, this year’s fleet of new performance-sailing boats spanned from small dinghies to high-tech bluewater catamarans. Here’s the best of the best from our  2023 Boat of the Year nominees »

The Total Package

• Beneteau First 36 2023 Boat of the Year
• Stated purpose: Shorthanded racing, club racing, coastal cruising
• Crew: Solo to six
• Praise for: Build quality, deck layout, versatility
• Est. price as sailed: $345,000

Like a runaway, the Beneteau First 36 careens across a westerly-whipped Chesapeake Bay. The boat’s big-shouldered spinnaker and mainsail are silhouetted in the early October morning light. It’s making trees on the Eastern Shore as we peg the throttle down to keep chase in a 19-foot RIB. The four crewmembers on board are having a casual conversation—like no big deal—when a cold and meaty gust fills the spinnaker. The leech flickers, and the boat surges forward onto plane. Twin rudders zipper the slick streaming out from the transom as the helmsman, hands at 10 and 2 on the carbon steering wheel, effortlessly weaves the boat across waves tops. The boat is, as the saying goes, on rails.

“Wicked,” is how senior Boat of the Year judge Chuck Allen summarizes his experience when he steps off. “That boat is going to be hard to beat.”

Three days and 10 boats later, nothing comes close to usurping the Beneteau First 36 as the obvious and unanimous Boat of the Year, a boat that has been a long time coming and overdue. It’s a boat that will serve many masters.

Beneteau initiated its First 36 project in 2019 by surveying a broad focus group of First “Point 7” owners and dealers about what they wanted in the marketplace, and the takeaways were: 1) Not another ­displacement boat—it had to plane. 2) They wanted a lounge, not a dining room. 3) They wanted their nav station back, and 4) for that, they were OK with having a smaller head.

Given the boat was to meet all three of its club racing, shorthanded and cruising demands, the brain trust assembled inside and outside of Beneteau focused on No. 1—keeping it light and fast. Naval architect Samuel Manuard, the new hot talent of the IMOCA 60 and Class 40 scenes, did the hull, keel and rig. Pure Structural Engineering took care of the structure, and the weight-obsessed glass slingers at Seascape’s factory in Slovenia ensured the boat came in at not a pound more than 10,580. At that weight, of course it’s going to plane.

The entire boat is ­vacuum-infused with CoreCell (hull) and PVC (bulkheads) from the deck down, inside and out, and everything, except the fridge, is somehow a piece of the structure puzzle.

“We are saving big weight there, as furniture is also part of the structure, and all of it glued together makes the boat extremely stiff and very light,” says Beneteau’s Tit Plevnik. “What is special is how calculated it is. In mass-production building, you can’t rely on precision, but we do. The boat is built to the same standard as a pure ­racing boat.”

“The moment I saw it, I knew it would be good. It’s a great-looking boat at the dock and even better with the sails up.” —Greg Stewart

Built like a race boat, the judges all agree it sure sails like one. “It’s a big 36-footer,” says veteran BOTY judge and naval architect Greg Stewart. “It’s a full-ended boat that has a hint of a scow-type bow with a lot of buoyancy forward. Looking at the numbers, what they achieved with the weight and its placement is impressive—10,000 pounds for a 36-foot waterline length is a very good number. I could tell the minute we put the spinnaker up it was a slippery boat.”

Stewart set the day’s top speed at a tick over 18 knots and says: “I remember feeling the puff hit and load the rig, and the boat just scooted off with really nice steering. It felt like a Laser when you get it in that groove and it just levitates. With the dual rudders, which are pretty long, the boat has more of a power-steering feel upwind, so it lets you do a lot of things. There’s so much control, which is a good thing because you can drive out of situations, but at the same time, it’s easy to oversteer.”

Multiple cockpit mock-ups done at ­different heel angles produced a workspace that the judges could find no flaw with. “It’s all legit, easy and clean in the pit,” Allen says. “With the four of us in the ­cockpit, we had plenty of space to move around and were never into each other.

“I was doing a lot of trimming downwind,” Allen adds. “You can feel the boat take off. It was really stable and easy to handle. The thing is light and fast, and we did push it to try and wipe it out, but it was hard to do.”

All the judges praised the clever location of the primary winches on sloped coamings, which were easier to trim from than a traditional winch-on-the-coaming setup. “They’re at the perfect height,” says judge Dave Powlison, “and with them angled like that, you don’t have to crane your neck to see the sail, and the lead is virtually override-proof.”

Also noteworthy is the generous space between the high carbon wheels and the cockpit walls that allow the helmsman to slide forward without having to step up and around the wheel. The jib trimmer has easy access to the three-dimensional clue adjustment systems, and for the pit, there’s plenty of clutches, redirects and cleats to keep everything sorted and tidy.

The standard spar, and that on the demo boat, is a deck-stepped Z Spars aluminum section with Dyform wire rigging that carries 860 square feet of upwind sail area, which Stewart says is considerable for the displacement of the boat. The mast is well aft, which really stretches out the J dimension and opens the foredeck for a quiver of headsails—for this, you’ll find two tack points on the foredeck. There are four halyards total: one for a masthead gennaker, a 2-to-1 for a code sail, a fractional gennaker, and a 2-to-1 staysail. Allen, a semi-retired sailmaker, put an estimate for a complete race inventory at $60,000, which would put the boat on the racecourse for roughly $400,000. (Base boat is priced at $345,000.)

When the race is done, however, how about that interior?

Step down the wide companionway steps into a space of design simplicity and efficiency, some of which makes you say, “Duh, of course.”

For example, there’s no ­traditional L-shaped galley to port or starboard. There is, however, a tall and slender fridge smack in the middle of the boat (that you connect to the galley with a removable cutting board to complete the L). Walk on either side of it to get forward, past the proper nav station, the fold-down dinette table in the middle with roomy 6-foot berths on both sides, a jetliner-size head with a stowaway sink to starboard, and then a gigantic V-berth that benefits from all that volume in the bow. Back aft, under the cockpit, are large quarter berths as well that easily cruise-convert into storage space for water toys, like kites, wings and foils, all of which takes us back to survey result No. 2. This is where the post-race party begins and ends.

With the usual supply-chain delays, compounded with the build and design team’s obsessive and calculated approach to getting the Beneteau First 36 perfect at Hull No. 1, its debut got off to a later start than hoped. But with early boats landing at eager dealers worldwide, Plevnik says the goal is 32 boats per year for the next two years. The BOTY judges assure us it’ll be worth the wait and give you plenty of time to start planning what you can and will do with it.

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Beneteau First 44 review

• Rupert Holmes
• December 22, 2022

Efficiency is the byword for this new Beneteau First 44 in both production and performance on the water

Product Overview

Price as reviewed:.

There’s a glassy calm, without a ripple on the water, yet we’re slipping along on the new Beneteau First 44 under Code 0 at four knots of boat speed. Of course, there’s a zephyr of breeze at the masthead, but even then this wouldn’t have been possible in a 44ft yacht weighing 10 tonnes a decade or two ago.

The Beneteau First 44 is a great example of the recent shift towards designs that are rewarding to sail in very light airs. This makes sense whether you’re based in southern England or the Mediterranean – in both cases summer winds are statistically Force 3 or less for at least 50% of the time.

A boat that will sail well in light airs is therefore to be welcomed and reduces the amount of tedious motoring needed to maintain acceptable speeds on passage. In the past good light airs performance was all too often a result of an oversized rig, or lack of ballast, and therefore came at the expense of ability in stronger winds.

However, that’s not the case with this boat. Conceptually, it’s very much like a smaller version of the Benteau First 53 , which is well proven in heavy weather. It benefits from a hull shape with very high form stability, along with a choice of deep, low centre of gravity keels.

First 44 performs well in light airs. Photo: Gilles Martin-Raget

Naval architect Roberto Biscontini gave the new design a proportionately narrower waterline beam and consequently a slightly deeper canoe body with a little more rocker. These are changes that promote the light airs performance at the expense of early surfing and only marginally reduce form stability.

In addition, there’s an option for 300lt of water ballast each side – equivalent to four people sitting on the rail. The system is commendably simple with the tanks filled and emptied individually using electric pumps operated from the helm stations. This takes three to four minutes, so is not designed for short tacking, but is perfect for a long beat or when fully powered up on a reach.

The helm stations have a bench seat that allows you to steer while sitting facing forward, as well as decent folding foot chocks for use when standing. Instrument pods are of a generous size with space for MFD, compass, engine, thruster and windlass controls.

In a little more breeze we made a solid 6 knots in only 7-8 knots of true wind, with occasional bursts of 7.5 knots boat speed in stronger puffs. Helm positions are great, with a good view of the headsail luff, whether standing up or sitting on the coaming outboard of the wheel. In these conditions many yachts lack positive feel in the helm, but steering was finger-light, responsive and rewarding throughout.

Our test version of the Beneteau First 44 was the cruising version, which has a 1m-long bowsprit with integrated anchor stowage, plus provision for tacking a Code 0 halfway along it and asymmetric spinnakers at the end. It was also fitted with the optional carbon two-spreader mast, with discontinuous rod rigging and textile backstay with Harken hydraulics. This is 1.8m taller than the standard rig, which adds 11m2 to upwind sail area and around 10% to the size of the Code 0 and spinnakers. The boat was also fitted with the lighter, but deeper 2.6m draught keel, with iron fin and lead torpedo bulb.

water ballast option gives additional stability equivalent to four crew on the rail. Photo: Gilles Martin-Raget

All lines are led aft through conduits to banks of clutches and stoppers, as well as a pair of winches, including electric primaries, ahead of the helm stations. There’s a below deck furler for the headsail, while sheets lead via conventional towed jib tracks on the coachroof. The German-style mainsheet is taken to a single point on the cockpit sole between the wheels and is operated by winches on the coaming each side, just ahead of the helm stations.

Transom bathing platform folds down electrically. Photo: Gilles Martin-Raget

Extra oomph

The Performance version adds two extra winches in the pit area, with a bank of clutches and diverters each side for cross winching, plus a longer 1.5m carbon sprit. It also has smaller tanks, no windlass or associated battery, and lithium service batteries to minimise weight.

There’s only one small step up to the side deck from behind and outboard the helm stations, but there’s no lowered working area on the side deck outboard of the winches. The deep moulded toerail is effective, but during manoeuvres and when sail handling crewmembers are likely to opt to stand inside the cockpit ahead of the helm stations, where there’s limited foot room. Rope bags, rather than bins, are provided but are of limited capacity.

Saloon is large and bright. There’s good stowage below the seats, and the dinette can seat six. Photo: Nicolas Claris

There are shallow cockpit lockers under the aft section of the cockpit seats, plus a gas locker under the cockpit sole where it’s easily accessed. The liferaft is stowed under the forward section of the cockpit, which is neat in some ways, but means it must be manoeuvred past the table before it can be launched.

The sail locker is relatively small, measuring little more than a couple of feet fore and aft, but offers room for reaching sails, a heavy weather jib, plus some lines and fenders. The wide transom includes a bathing platform that folds down electrically to reveal a small tender garage, which also has space for fenders, lines, and other paraphernalia.

Beneteau First 44 down below

Below decks designer Lorenzo Argento has retained a similar concept and layout to the Beneteau First 53. Small changes include extending the dinette to give space for six people to dine, and there’s generally more efficient use of space, including good stowage below the seats.

Forward cabin has a peninsula double bed but lacks stowage. Photo: Nicolas Claris

The saloon is a wonderfully large and bright space that occupies the full width of the hull and benefits from excellent eye-level hull windows. In addition to the dinette to port, there’s a 1.9m-long settee (with optional lee cloth) to starboard, the aft end of which doubles as a seat for a small aft facing navstation.

The classic L-shaped galley has good fiddles, adequate worktop space, a very large top and front opening fridge, plus a single bowl sink and decent stowage. The forward en suite cabin has a peninsula bed, but not a great deal of stowage, while the two identical aft cabins are of a decent size and have reasonable natural light, but only two small opening ports for ventilation.

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This is a desirable yacht with potential to bring owners, their families and friends a lot of pleasure. There’s enough space and comfort for very civilised fast cruising, plus scope to race, with enough room to take a full team offshore. In light airs the combination of hull shape and powerful rig enable more passages to be completed predominantly under sail. At the same time, it’s a design with the ability to take heavy weather in its stride and has a lot more interior space than earlier performance cruisers of a similar length. This boat also completes Beneteau’s fully revamped First line, which now includes a wide range of distinctive designs aimed at specific sectors of the market for performance boats, with seven models from the First 14 dinghy up to the luxury performance cruiser First 53.

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• Beneteau First 30E

The Beneteau First 30E Sailboat Specs & Key Performance Indicators

The Beneteau First 30E is a product of the renowned Beneteau shipyard, a company with a long history of producing high-quality, performance-oriented sailboats. The First 30E model, in particular, is known for its performance, design, and value for money.

Published Specification for the Beneteau First 30E

Underwater Profile:  Fin keel with spade rudder

Hull Material : GRP (Fibreglass)

Length Overall : 30'6" (9.3m)

Waterline Length : 26'11" (8.2m)

Beam : 10'8" (3.3m)

Draft : 5'6" (1.7m)

Rig Type : Masthead Sloop

Displacement : 7,055lb (3,200kg)

Designer : Jean Berret

Builder : Beneteau (France)

Year First Built : 1981

Year Last Built : 1984

Number Built : 443

Owners Association :  Beneteau Owners Club

Published Design Ratios for the Beneteau First 30E

1. Sail Area/Displacement Ratio:  18.7

2. Ballast/Displacement Ratio:  36.5

3. Displacement/Length Ratio:  204

4. Comfort Ratio:  16.6

5. Capsize Screening Formula:   2.2

Performance

In terms of performance in a seaway, the Beneteau First 30E boasts impressive design ratios. With a displacement to length ratio (D/L) of 204, it falls into the moderate displacement category. This means that the boat has a good balance between speed and stability, making it suitable for both racing and cruising.

The sail area to displacement ratio (SA/D) of the First 30E is 18.7, which indicates that the boat has a good amount of sail area relative to its weight. This means that the boat can perform well in light wind conditions, but it also has the stability to handle stronger winds.

The ballast to displacement ratio (B/D) of the First 30E is 36.5%, which is relatively high. This means that the boat has a good amount of weight in its keel, which contributes to its stability and ability to right itself after heeling over.

Pros & Cons

The boat's strengths lie in its performance, versatility, and build quality. The First 30E is known for its speed and agility, making it a popular choice for racing. However, it is also comfortable and well-equipped enough for cruising, making it a versatile option for those who enjoy both aspects of sailing.

The First 30E's weaknesses, as reported by some owners, include a somewhat cramped interior and a lack of storage space. However, these are common trade-offs in performance-oriented sailboats, and many owners feel that the boat's sailing capabilities more than make up for these shortcomings.

In terms of pros, the First 30E is praised for its responsive handling, impressive speed, and solid construction. It is also noted for its attractive design and good value for money.

On the cons side, some owners have reported issues with the boat's engine access and the quality of some of the interior fittings. However, these issues are relatively minor and can be addressed with some maintenance and upgrades.

The Secondhand Market

The recommendation for prospective buyers is to consider the First 30E if they are looking for a performance-oriented sailboat that can also be used for cruising. The boat's design and build quality make it a solid investment, and its performance characteristics make it a joy to sail.

The Beneteau First 30E is relatively available on the secondhand market, with prices varying depending on the boat's age, condition, and equipment.

As of the time of writing, the asking prices for a used First 30E range from around $20,000 for older models to over $40,000 for newer, well-equipped examples.

When buying a used First 30E, it's important to consider the boat's maintenance history and current condition. A well-maintained boat can be a great value, while a neglected boat may require costly repairs and upgrades.

The Competition

The Beneteau First 30E is a popular choice among sailing enthusiasts due to its blend of performance, comfort, and affordability. Here's how it compares to other similar sailboats in its class:

1. Jeanneau Sun Fast 3200 : The Sun Fast 3200 is a more racing-oriented boat compared to the Beneteau First 30E. While the First 30E offers a good balance of comfort and performance, the Sun Fast 3200 is designed for speed and agility, potentially making it less comfortable for long cruises.

2. J/30 : The J/30 is another popular choice in this class. It offers similar performance to the First 30E but is often praised for its spacious and comfortable interior. However, the J/30 may be less affordable than the First 30E.

3. Catalina 30 : The Catalina 30 is known for its spacious interior and ease of handling, making it a popular choice for family cruising. However, it may not offer the same level of performance as the First 30E, particularly in more challenging conditions.

4. Hunter 30 : The Hunter 30 offers a similar level of comfort to the First 30E, with a spacious and well-designed interior. However, some sailors find that the Hunter 30 lacks the performance and responsiveness of the First 30E.

5. Dehler 29 : The Dehler 29 is a high-performance cruiser-racer like the First 30E. It offers excellent speed and handling, but some sailors find its interior less comfortable and spacious than the First 30E.

The Beneteau First 30E offers a good balance of performance, comfort, and affordability, making it a strong contender in its class. 

The Beneteau First 30E is a versatile, performance-oriented sailboat that offers a good balance between speed, stability, and comfort. Its strengths lie in its sailing capabilities and build quality, while its weaknesses are relatively minor and can be addressed with some maintenance and upgrades.

The First 30E is a solid choice for those looking for a boat that can perform well in a variety of conditions and sailing styles. Whether you're interested in racing, cruising, or both, the First 30E has the potential to deliver a satisfying and rewarding sailing experience.

Other sailboats in the Beneteau First product range include:

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Limited offer on the First 36 model

Offshore pack free.

That's €15,959 excl. VAT in customer benefits! *

Equipment included in the Offshore pack:

• Two GMI 20s, three GNX 120s
• Airmar DST810 Smart ™ Multisensor for depth, speed and temperature
• gWind™ Race wired wind transducer
• VHF 215i with VHF antenna
• GA 38 GPS and GLONASS antenna
• Reactor™ 40 Autopilot
• Solid-state 9-axis attitude heading reference system (AHRS)
• Raymarine Type 1 mechanical linear drive unit
• GHC 50 4” colour display pilot controller with a touch-sensitive screen
• Remote control for Reactor™ autopilot

FREE ACCESS TO THE FIRST ACADEMY

Find out how to get the best performance from your  First 36 and join our owner community at the first edition of the BENETEAU First Academy.

Take advantage of the offer

*Network sales offer valid for BENETEAU dealers taking part in the campaign. Cannot be combined with any other offer in progress. Valid while stocks last. Non-contractual photos.

Learn more about the boat eligible for this offer

Length Overall

10.97 m / 36'0"

Beam overall

3.8 m / 12'6''

Published on 05.04.2024

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