Beneteau First 21.7

First things first

Sometimes you get lucky. I'd ordered a new First 21.7 trailerable yacht from Vicsail in Sydney at the very time Beneteau was launching a new range of Oceanis yachts at Port America's Cup in Valencia, Spain.

Would I like to fly over the France to check out the new boat on the production line and then wing down to Valencia to test sail the new ocean-going yachts? Would I what!

The editor graciously surrendered his flight to Valencia to me and, after the mild agony of 29 hours in three aircraft, there I was exercising the jet lag away beside the river in St Gilles, on my way to one of the several boat production plants Beneteau operates in this coastal region of Northern France.

Beneteau doesn't confine yacht production to one plant and power boats to another: rather, the production is organised around the physical size of different craft.

For example, at the plant where 'my' First 21.7 was being put together there were 25.7s and 27.7s being built, as well as Antares power boats. This plant alone produces some 1300 craft each year.

Some of the larger moulds at the nearby head office plant produced hulls that were trucked to other plants in the area, for final assembly. The smaller moulds at this facility churned out Beneteau's class racing boats.

The First yachts start off with meticulously cleaned moulds; a job that's done almost exclusively by female staff members, who have better attention to detail than the males, Beneteau has found.

Lay-up is a manual operation, using high-tech spraying equipment and all the fibre and resin is weighed during production, to ensure uniformity.

The company runs a broken-shift system that starts in the early morning with the overnight-cured moulds being unloaded after polymerisation and ends with late-shift housekeeping in readiness for the early birds.

Fitting out and assembly are the dominant occupations during the bulk of the working day. Hulls are fitted out as much as possible before the deck assembly is fixed in place.

Power and sail boats move on individual gantry 'trucks' that roll on castors between stations. This elevated arrangement allows above and below hull work to be carried out without the need to raise and lower the boats.

At the fitting stations, mezzanine floors at water-level height are fixed around each boat, to allow the fitters easy entry and exit from the craft they're working on.

When it's time to bolt on keels or propellers, the fitters run the gantry trucks over hydraulic work platforms to handle heavy items.

Quality control is evident everywhere and protective materials cover vulnerable points on the vessels.

I was particularly impressed with Beneteau's 'sticker system'. Any blemishes in gel coats get marked with a coloured sticker, but they're not plain stickers.

Each sticker has a number printed on it and the boat isn't cleared from the production area until an inspector has returned every numbered sticker to the vessel's clipboard.

If there's a gap in the numbered sequence the search is on to find it. Some of the stickers were placed on 'blemishes' I couldn't even see.

At the end of the line, each boat is floated in a test tank, where it's showered and checked for integrity, and the function of all through-hull fittings, engines and heads.

THE WOOD ON WOOD
I looked in vain in two of the boat plants for wood-working areas, but there were none. All structural and trim woodwork is produced in a separate plant and delivered in boat-ready, caged 'kits' for each vessel.

The wood factory operates a just-in-time production system to minimise warehousing needs and to reduce the chance of damage in storage.

Beneteau builds some of its larger boats in overseas markets and wood kits are shipped out with the hull and deck mouldings.

The Beneteau wood factory is run by a diminutive French woman named Florence Gouby. She has qualifications in production engineering and is also a timber specialist, making her a rare executive.

Florence took me around her domain at a fair clip, pointing out the various processes all the while. It was obvious that she knew every staff member and every plant function.

The plant handles mind-boggling 30,000 pieces of timber each day.

The timber used for Beneteau interiors is almost entirely African and European plantation hardwood. Plantation teak from Burma is used for exterior surfaces.

Some of the 'feedstock' I saw consisted of tree trunks that had been bandsawn lengthways into planks about 50mm thick and bound together with spacer blocks between the planks, to allow even dry-out.

Most cabin woodwork in Beneteau boats is laminated. Bulkheads and cabin walls are cut from veneered plywood, on a computer-controlled, flat-bed machine that resembles a sheet metal laser cutter.

The top-layer veneers are applied in-house from the same timber that's used for the curved woodwork sections and great care is taken to match the grain as seamlessly as possible.

Nearly all curved shapes for rounded wall corners and flat surface fiddles are made from multiple laminations that are shape-formed and glued in jigs, then given final shape and sanding before heading to the varnishing area.

The laminations are very thin and the stack is compressed during curing, so it's almost impossible to see the breaks between the layers. This structure gives the curved sections enormous strength and shape-retention, as well as assuring that any subsequent sanding to remove 'dings' that may occur during the boat's life won't change the appearance of the woodwork.

Curved sections are hung on a track that passes through a dust-free spray chamber, where they're coated by hand gun, before passing through a drier. Flat timber is coated on a multi-stage line that guarantees thickness and blemish-free application.

I left Beneteau secure in the knowledge that I should receive a quality boat in a few months time.

The better half and I decided on the Beneteau First 21.7 after months of researching the trailer yacht offerings in the marketplace.

We wanted a yacht that could be cruised in shallow water two-up, yet would be seaworthy enough to handle short green-water passages, such as from Airlie Beach out to Hammo. One that was as close to shoal draft as we could get, without compromising performance. And a craft that wouldn't be disgraced around the cans in twilight races two-up with white sails, and also do well with four on board and an asymmetric flying off a short sprit.

On top of that, we needed something easy to tow and manoeuvre on-road.

We looked at boats and literature, and then sat down to dissect the data.

Trimarans looked attractive except for interior room and water ballasted boats looked good from all points of view except performance.

Trailer yachts with vertically-retractable keels offered everything, except that the keel case intruded on interior space, unless we went for a larger, heavier boat than we wanted.

So, last man standing was 'Benny' Beneteau.

We have some European mates who race them and reckon they go well in all conditions, and we liked the open interior and the unique, folding keel that intrudes only a little into the cabin.

A compromise is that the keel folds up horizontally under the hull and needs 0.7m of water to float the boat, but if grounded, the bit that's touching is cast iron, not FRP.

The First 21.7 is a fat little boat with a broad stern, so it's as well it comes with two rudders.

We've ordered it on a dual-axle trailer, with a 10hp outboard and can hardly wait to get it wet. Watch this space!