Big Ben

You know a company must be doing something right when they announce that their new boat Is the seventh generation of that marque yet such is the case with the new Beneteau Oceanis 40.1. To say times have changed is, of course, incredibly trite but- by god – it’s certainly the case here. The Oceanis 40.1 feels like an entirely different boat to the first generation yacht.

This is the fourth yacht in a new range that started with the Oceanis 51.1; the 51.1 was a real breakthrough in terms of cruising yacht design. The Berret/Racoupeau design team was looking for new ways to increase internal volume while retaining a modest amount of wetted surface area and settled on the cunning ploy of running a chine well forward to the bow in order to provide extra volume forward. This was a ploy that worked exceptionally well and, despite switching to Finot/Conq to design the Oceanis 46.1