TESTED – First 53, a comeback in style not only in performance. PHOTOS

More than a year after interviewing the designers(HERE) and previewing it at the Cannes Boat Show(HERE), we finally got on board and, more importantly, sailed on Beneteau’s new First 53.

Who could have conceived of a comfortable yet high-performance boat with a minimal design that does not lack elegance and taste if not design gurus Lorenzo Argento and Roberto Biscontini?

We were in Port Ginesta, Barcelona, at Beneteau’s sea trials headquarters to touch on what has been promised for so long about the revival of the First line. Already from the dock, this boat shows itself different from what beneteau has accustomed us to so far. The stern is a very wide 4.90mt, but the feeling is not at all of a squat boat.

The exterior layout is very minimal. A clean deck, free from halyards that are retractable and from trolleys. The mainsail sheet point is fixed, while the genoa carriages are “set” snugly on the high edge of the deckhouse, leaving the passage along the entire walkway to the bow completely free. Finally, the inverted leapfrog increases interior space, decreases the maximum height of the deckhouse, and gives a more aggressive impetus to the lines of this model.

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Performing to the eye and more. The new First 53 especially impresses in navigation. The maximum beam is 5 meters and loses only 10 cm at the transom height. The stern is wide but not squat as we said at the beginning, and the hull line does not have the famous angle that we are used to seeing in such wide boats. Under sail we notice that the moment of heeling is not particularly gradual. In fact, the hull even with little wind immediately tilts those degrees necessary to reduce the wetted surface and develop a good upwind. But don’t worry, since precisely this heeling is not gradual, the increase in pressure on the sails will not be followed by the proportional increase in degrees of heeling.

The upwind boat performs well. It is stable, rudder sensitive, and with its 105% Genoa of 85 sq. m. and 92 sq. m. North mainsail in 3DI endurance has plenty of power even with low pressure. With an apparent angle of 35 degrees to the wind is a pressure of about 4 knots, the First 53 can hit peaks of 5.1 knots. Under code0 the good performance does not change. With a pressure of 5.5 knots, tightening to the wind 50 degrees, the First maintains a pace of more than 7 knots.

The interior is very well designed for being an “industrial” boat. “The challenge,” Argento tells us, “was to design a boat that could have excellent Italian taste, minimalist but not “sloppy,” and that above all could be competitive not only in performance but also in price. With a base price of around €450,000, the First 53 aims to position itself in the middle of the market between 50- and 55-foot boats. “A 55-footer with the price of a 50,” is how Beneteau describes the new model. Certainly going down below deck, the feeling is just that of a vast living area, handled differently than usual. Argento in fact, with a twist, harks back to “old” layouts of normally larger boats, where the living area was separated from the dining area.

How? We will tell you about it in the full test in the next issue of the Sailing Newspaper print edition, along with all the details of the boat.

Bacci Del Buono

Overall length: 17.16 mt

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Hull length: 15.98 mt

Maximum beam: 5.00 mt

Light displacement: 15,500 kg

Fuel capacity: 400 lt

Freshwater capacity: 720L

Engine power: 110 hp

Propulsion: Sail drive

CE Certification: A10/B12/C14

www.beneteau.com

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