Beneteau First 32

[martinb]

Does anyone have any knowledge of these boats?

I am looking for a boat about this size that is competetive round the cans and offshore, but with the cruising benefits it seems to offer. Any feedback most welcome

Martin

 

[sailorman]

assume u mean one of the better bennyblobbies /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[Dyak]

Martin, I have a First 310 and find it a very user friendly performance cruiser, especially with the larger 7/8ths fractional rig.
She performs well in all conditions but like a lot of the first range needs to be sailed fairly flat and reefing early to stop rounding up seems to pay dividends.
Internally the heads are a bit on the tight side and i'm only 5'8''.Similarly headroom in the for and aft cabins is fairly restricted but adequate to good in the saloon. Locker space is however poor for anything more than a week cruise (That is if i emptied all the under bunk lockers of spare sails).
The cockpit size is good if you have the tiller rather than the wheel and all in all I have found the boat to be very seaworthy and enjoyable to sail.

 

[BAtoo]

A friend has one of these. Very nice boat & sails well around the cans in club races. Also good off-shore. Good value boat. The older First series are quite solidly constucted.

 

[PeteCooper]

I used to sail a First 29 and it was a nice boat. We raced it and had lots of fun. The main drawback is that locker space is very limited for more serious cruising.

 

[ajt]

I have owned a 32s5 for two years now and am very happy with it, sailing performance is very good often out performing much bigger boats. It needs reefing at about force 5 otherwise weather helm gets very heavy. we have found it very good value for money and provides generous accomadation for the size of boat