A real sailor's view of the French boat.

Of course every boat show has its requisite pod of Beneteaus, 8 of them
accessible from a single stairway where the marketing people put the
big "B" sticker on your chest as you give them your e-mail address.
The boats were the way they always are; full of headroom and furniture
with shiny sprayed on varnish, with mid-level hardware, undersized
rigs, the ever-annoying Bennie glue-on headliners, and undersized rigs.
Most Beneteaus excel at being throwaway cruisers, taking reasonable
care of their inhabitants for a handful of good years. They do almost
everything reasonably. Having spent over 10,000 miles on Bennies of
various sizes, they **** you off too, but not like when Bavaria keel
bolts fail or anything like that. It's more like "this water system
must have been designed by a blind child with dyslexia" or "I love
having to use an angle grinder and dust mask to be able to get at a
bolt that will tighten this stanchion up." There was a nice sign at
the entrance to the stern of the 36.7 advertising that something like
50 boats were in the Great Lakes OD fleets already. You have to give
props to that kind of growth for a boat that is just not that
interesting. And that traveller looks like just the thing to take a
chunk out of the shins every race. Brilliant. Hey, at least it's
cheap and slow. The most interesting part of the Beneteau displays is
the people who spend their time on them, especially the really cruise
center cockpit boats. If these center cockpit boats bring more people
out on the water, I'm all for them, as long as I don't have to sail
with those people. When I first came back to the US after years
working on boats in the Med and Caribbean, I discovered that non-racers
in the US think Beneteaus are exotic boats that guarantee awesome
performance and prestige. They don't realize that just because
something is French or has a big swim platform doesn't mean it's
exotic, and that Renault is a French company too. You know what? I
just realized that Americans think Renaults are exotic and prestigious
as well.