The Beneteau Oceanis 37.1 is the latest model in the Beneteau Oceanis range – one of the best-known and recognisable in cruising yachts today. Sixty different models or variations have been built over a span of nearly 40 years, ranging from 28ft to 62ft, and in large numbers, making Oceanis almost ubiquitous in virtually every harbour and marina.

The Oceanis 38.1, the predecessor of the Oceanis in question today, reached 800 hulls built in just under a decade of production of this one model. That’s some serious output. Some of this is driven by demand from the charter market, with its insatiable appetite for boats that are modern, spacious, easy to sail and affordable, but those characteristics also make the boat appealing to private owners.

Most sailors don’t, it transpires, aspire to round Cape Horn or to reach the Arctic in a hurricane, preferring pleasant harbours, swimming off the boat, and cruising when the forecast suits. While Marc Lombard and Beneteau know how to make a boat that appeals to this majority of cruising sailors, to suggest that Oceanis yachts are only good for fairweather sailing would be doing them a serious disservice. There is a reason no fewer than nine Beneteau Oceanis boats were entered for the 2024 Atlantic Rally for Cruisers.

When Yachting Monthly tested the Oceanis 38.1 in 2014, we concluded that Beneteau had built a sound and surprisingly pleasant boat to sail, with just a couple of oversights in her deck layout. I was keen to see what 10 years of refinement has done.

Wide sterns, full bows and full-length hull chines are par for the course these days, but you can’t help but be struck by the muscular bow chines of the Beneteau Oceanis 37.1. These work to keep the waterline narrow for less drag in light winds, while maximising stability when heeled, at the same time as supercharging the space below decks for beds, lockers and lounging.

The deck-edge bevel adds more volume while reducing the apparent height of the topsides. It’s also a neat visual trick that large branding at the stern and the pale grey gelcoat of our test boat (navy blue is no longer offered), fool the eye into thinking that the boat is smaller than it is. Step aboard via the bathing platform, however, (which offers the same surface areas as the 51.1, incidentally), and you are under no illusion about the amount of space on board.

Time to slip the lines

Before I went below, however, it was time to leave the berth, assisted by the bow thruster, and head out through a murky morning into what turned out to be a rare pleasant October day.

Clear of the Hamble, we were free to set sail – self-tacking gib and slab-reefed main is standard, but our test boat had a 110% overlapping genoa and in-mast furling, which 90% of buyers take, according to Ancasta.

We were soon on the wind and beating eastwards of Bramble bank in search of some wind-against-tide chop. We cranked on a little more halyard tension from the helm, and adjusted the (optional) towable genoa cars to get a good headsail shape. Grinding the mid-boom, bridle-mounted mainsheet on at the companionway took a little more effort, but eventually gave us a more or less acceptable sail shape.

I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of battenless and roachless furling mainsails, so I am biased, but I think the standard slab-reefed main, or indeed the Performance square top main would help bring this boat to life.

That said, this boat is more about ease of handling than absolute performance. Plus, all three main options remain sheeted in the same way, making a bigger, more powerful sail even harder to sheet in to get close to proper leech tension.

In reality, most owners are more likely to be content to put a reef in or stick the engine on before too much elbow grease is required.

The squaretop main is an option thanks to the absence of a backstay, with the Z-spars 9/10ths fractional mast instead supported by very long spreaders swept roughly 40° aft. This serves to keep the rig simple and the aft end of the cockpit clear of wires. The downside is that you can’t add tension upwind to prevent the forestay sagging to leeward, and you’re limited on how far you can sheet the main out downwind.

If you’re not too fussed, forestay sag is probably just a sign that it’s time to roll some sail away, though we were enjoying ourselves too much to do that, pushing the boat a bit harder than she’s really meant to be.

Putting a boat though her paces in this way helps reveal how she will respond under duress, whether from the conditions or the crew. I have to say, the boat acquitted herself with aplomb. Upwind, she powered along brilliantly, and pointed to a very respectable 32-35° off the apparent wind, tacking through 90-100° in a Force 4 (14-16 knots true).

Calm response

The chines show that the boat is intended for modest angles of heel – she seemed happiest and most powered up at about 20° of heel. Hold on in the gusts however – we had up to 21 knots across the deck – and then bear away with the sails pinned in and you’ll discover that while many boats would gripe horribly, and possibly let go altogether, the Beneteau Oceanis 37.1 responded calmly, obediently and with just a little loading through the helm.

It was only when we got to 38° of heel in a particularly feisty gust that the leeward rudder, now deep under water, lost some grip, allowing the boat to ease up to a close-hauled course before carrying on as if nothing had happened.

The effect is one of reassurance. You could confidently hand the helm over to an inexperienced crew and be happy that neither they nor you are about to get your hand bitten off. My only criticisms of the helm are that the well-balanced hull, the twin rudders and twin stainless steel wheels don’t give much feedback of what’s going on in the water or when it is time to back off, and that the boat didn’t feel hugely directionally stable so that holding a course, under sail or engine, needed to be done by eye, rather than feel, and the boat won’t stay on course of her own volition for long.

There are no options for upgrading the engine on this boat because the standard is already a generous 40hp Yanmar (some of her competitors come with a 19hp as standard). She motored along happily at 6.5 knots at a gentle 2,300rpm, while flat out at just over 3,000rpm gave 8.0 to 8.5 knots – more than enough oomph to get home against wind and tide.

The deck layout was fairly conventional, but works well for a medium-sized cruising boat. Without backstays, the wheels can both be pushed into the quarters, though space has been left for fold-down seats behind the helm, which fold up out of the way when the large bathing platform is down.

It’s also comfortable to sit outboard on the side deck, though I’d have liked a slightly raised seat to keep my backside dry when there’s water on deck. My only other quibbles with the helm were that I’d want the wooden foot chock slightly further outboard to brace against when sitting, and I would want the mainsheet led aft to the helm so I could dump the mainsheet in a gust without the need to go to the companionway.

Otherwise, the layout of instruments, with plotter, engine, anchor and thruster controls to starboard all worked well, with two instrument repeater heads with autopilot control to port, and the winches and clutches either side were in easy reach from behind the wheel. Neither of these are powered, though you can make the port halyard winch powered to help with a slab-reefed main.

Views out and forwards from the cockpit are excellent, and this has been achieved without making the cockpit feel unduly exposed, thanks largely to decent-height coachroof and coamings around the seating, and the large, central moulded table, which is good for bracing, and provides ample stowage in a large bin locker, plus drinks holders and handholds.

Stowage is excellent on deck, with a further cubby hole on the aft end of the table, two reasonable lazarettes in which the various systems installed there have been kept out of the way, allowing space for fenders and other gear. This is in addition to a truly vast cockpit locker.

In the three-cabin version, this would just be sole depth; on our two-cabin version there would be room for a dinghy, folding bikes and more, and the panelled lining and shelving would help keep the smaller items in order. Access is hugely improved with internal access via the shower compartment.

Beneteau is working hard to reduce the environmental impact of its yachts, and one small feature was the cockpit decking. Looking like teak, the wooden slats were actually composite veneers of iroko, a tropical hardwood which, though less oily than teak, promises to be very hard wearing, with much less serious environmental impact than teak.

Moving about on deck is easy thanks to completely clear and wide side decks, and grab rails as far as the shrouds. Moulded toe rails keep your feet secure, and although going forward of the mast underway might feel a little exposed due to the wide beam, towable jib cars and all lines led aft, as well as an anchor windlass remote at the helm mean you’ll be doing very little work on deck.

The anchor locker forwards has a good deep drop below the offset windlass to prevent chain pile ups, while the chain is led via a deflector out to the bow roller, mounted below the moulded bowsprit, with two tack points for offwind sails.

Thanks to the coachroof-mounted mainsheet bridle, the companionway is long enough to avoid steep steps down into the saloon. Here, Beneteau has opted, as it did on the 38.1, for a longitudinal galley to starboard and C-shaped saloon seating to starboard. Both work well, and the plans for the boat include a central bench seat to increase seating to six around the table, though this wasn’t included on our test boat. The galley has good stowage and space to work, aided by the bracing provided by the mast support.

This leaves the main heads to starboard, complete with separate shower compartment and hanging locker aft, and the toilet and basin forward. If you opt for the three-cabin version, you lose the separate shower compartment, but gain a mirror image of the port aft cabin, complete with a huge double bed, hanging locker and a shelf outboard, though no overhead lockers.

To port, ahead of this cabin is an aft-facing chart table. Beneteau has opted to use the space aft of the table for two stowage lockers – useful space for all sort of kit, lifejackets and the like.

Most will find this a reasonable compromise as much of the navigation will be done on deck via the chartplotter, though I did feel the lack of a dedicated seat detracted slightly from the usability of the chart table. So too the shallow table stowage for chart folios, though two proper bookshelves outboard were a real plus.

Other design pluses were the shelves outboard of the saloon seating had fiddles, making them useful for keeping small items without losing them down the back of the cushions, as well as the overhead lockers above the saloon seating, and ample stowage under and behind the saloon seating.

Sleeping arrangements

Finally, the forward cabin makes good use of the full beam with a big centreline double berth. Reading lights at either end mean you can lie whichever way round you prefer, with cubbyholes in the forward bulkhead and around the hull windows providing somewhere to put your glasses and book at night. There are good big lockers either side, though overhead stowage is limited to shelves rather than lockers. There is also no stowage beneath the berth as this is taken up with water tanks and the bow thruster.

If you opt for the heads in the forward cabin, the berth gets offset to starboard. It’s no smaller, just slightly tighter for getting in and out; if you regularly have guests on board it may be worth the additional privacy.

Construction wise, this is built to Beneteau’s tried-and-tested formula of a hand-laid solid hull, with a vacuum-infused foam sandwich deck to keep weight down. The hull matrix is bonded but not laminated to the hull and the cast-iron keel bolted through both.

The keel itself comes in two options: a deep draught 2.10m keel, or a shallow draught 1.64m, which houses a centreboard-style keel extension for upwind sailing.

Beneteau Oceanis 37.1 specifications

LOA: 11.93m / 39ft 2in
Hull length: 10.99m / 36ft 1in
LWL: 10.83m / 35ft 6in
Beam: 3.92m / 12ft 10in
Draught: 2.10m / 6ft 11in (Shoal 1.63m / 5ft 4in)
Displacement: 6,864kg / 15,128 lbs
Ballast: 1,800kg / 3,967 lbs
Sail area: 60m2 / 646 sq ft
Performance sail area: 73.5m2 / 792 sq ft)
Bal/disp Ratio: 26.2%
Disp/length: 149.5
SA/D Ratio: 16.9
Engine: Yanmar 40hp
Transmission: Shaft
Water: 355L
Fuel: 130L
RCD: Category A8
Designer: Marc Lombard
Builder: beneteau.com

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