BOAT REVIEW Beneteau Swift 35 Trawler Rosé

She did most of the research and made all the calls,” explains Brendan, “because she knew exactly what we needed.”

What they needed was a new Beneteau Swift Trawler 35, the first in New Zealand, courtesy of 36 Degrees Brokers.

The couple own a holiday home on Kawau Island and an apartment on the mainland at Snells Beach, splitting their time between the two residences. The boat, named Rosé after their favourite summer tipple, swings on a mooring in the bay below the holiday home, ready for Brendan and Vicki and their extended family to enjoy at any time.

When we went aboard Rosé her owners had already owned her for a few weeks and were thoroughly at home onboard. While it’s their first launch they are no strangers to boats, in either their private or business lives. As well as Rosé, they own a 6m Stabicraft, used for fishing and to ferry themselves to and from Kawau Island and, as a Kawau native, Vicki grew up around boats. The couple’s long, varied career in the hotel trade at times also included stints running or managing fleets of vessels.

The Swift Trawler 35 is developed from Beneteau’s long-running and highly successful Swift Trawler 34 model. Like the old 34, she’s a semi-displacement/semi-planing trawler-style motor yacht, but with more modern styling and many improvements. The new model is easily recognisable by her slightly raked windscreen, a departure from the more upright glass of the previous model. The windows are bigger, too, letting in more light and imparting a more spacious feel to the saloon.

Importer 36 Degrees Brokers has undertaken a few custom features, as it does for most of its clients. Canvas and clears for the cockpit were manufactured in Auckland by Craft Covers & Interiors and 36 Degrees also supplied the U-rails for twinned bait boards on the boarding platform. Baitboards are a common addition for Kiwi owners, most of whom like to fish.

Brendan and Vicki have also specified a gas bayonet fitting so they can BBQ on the swim platform, and a pot hauler inside the cockpit for Brendan’s hapuku dropper lines. The platform has enough room for an inflatable dinghy or small RIB tender.

The teak-soled cockpit, sheltered by the upper deck and LED-lit at night, is on the same level as the boat’s wide boarding platform. It is not especially large, but a clever offset, three-way transom door arrangement really opens the cockpit to the boarding platform, making it feel like one space.

The doors provide a pair of folding cockpit seats when closed, supplementing a fixed transom seat and portable folding seats stowed in the lazarette, used when the saloon table is moved out into the cockpit, or around the table in the saloon.

The covered side deck extends from the cockpit to the helm door. Dockside, boarding is easy thanks to a bulwark door and there’s a sliding door for the helmsman, who can step straight out to secure the lines on the starboard side – useful when shorthanded.

A triple-slider aluminium and glass door opens from the cockpit into the saloon. The saloon is modest in size – the boat is only 10.67m long (35 feet, six inches – 37 feet overall) – but sliding windows and doors complement white gelcoat ceilings to give it a spacious feel. The windows are larger than the previous model’s, letting in even more light.

Comfortable saloon seating converts into a double berth with a privacy curtain, there’s an icemaker and freezer aft behind the cabinets, a saloon table that can be moved out to the cockpit and the vessel boasts satellite TV. Solar panels on the canvas bimini top keep the house batteries topped up.

The Swift’s galley is set forward, opposite the downstairs helm station. Featuring a double sink, decent bench space with in-bench storage for cutting boards etc., lots of useful bins, cubbies, lockers and drawers, it has a two-burner LPG cooktop and an LPG oven-grill under the bench.

The main helm station is downstairs with easy access to the flush side deck. Unlike some French boats, the cabin isn’t offset, but the moulded roof over the side deck makes it look that way. The roof also shelters the helm door from the elements while thigh-high bulwarks provide good security when moving forward to access the bow.

Steps lead up onto the foredeck, surrounded by a stainless-steel railing starting just forward of the bulwark door and wrapping all the way around to the cockpit on the port side. Bow access along the port side is more conventional with steps up from the cockpit.

Brendon and Vicki have opted for a modest factory electronics package comprising a 12-inch Raymarine Hybrid Touch MFD, Raymarine autopilot and VHF radio, with all the most important instruments and controls repeated for the flybridge helm station (a 9-inch MFD upstairs).

The downstairs helm station features a double-width, fore and aft adjustable helm seat with a folding bolster and a dashboard that’s hinged for easy access to electrical wiring and cables. The footrest folds up when not required and there’s a clever fold-away platform to stand on for better forward vision. The large wheel looks and feels ship-like.
Rosé’s interior décor is simple but stylish, with plenty of wood for a traditional feel. White gelcoat ceilings and pale upholstery sets off the teak panelling and lighter-coloured wood laminate floors very nicely.

This is a two-cabin vessel with a pair of bunks in the port cabin, a bathroom on the starboard side and the owners’ cabin in the bow. All the cabins feature opening ports and overhead hatches with insect and light screens. There’s good storage in hanging lockers and under the master cabin’s island bed, along with access to the bow thruster.

The bathroom is a generous size for a vessel of this length and features a moulded, easy-clean liner, a decent-sized vanity, heaps of storage and a combination toilet and shower in a separate compartment.

For Rosé’s owners, the amount of storage is one of the boat’s attractions. The lazarette is huge, since this is a single-screw vessel with the engine room under the saloon sole. All over the Swift Trawler 35, Beneteau has gone to great lengths to create storage in what otherwise would be dead space.

While docking is usually undertaken from downstairs, when cruising in good weather Brendan prefers to con the vessel from the flybridge helm station. Although this is a shaft-driven, single-screw vessel, it’s easy to dock thanks to Quick bow and stern thrusters, with thruster controls at both helm stations.

The flybridge’s canvas bimini runs forward from the radar arch to provide shade. There’s a very sociable C-shaped seating area addressing a small teak table and a simple swivelling bucket helm seat upholstered in blue and grey to match the seating.

The upper deck is quite spacious since it extends all the way back over the cockpit. Access is via a ladder and hatch on the starboard side, there’s a stainless-steel railing for safety and a rocket launcher for fishing rod storage.

The Swift Trawler 35 is a semi-displacement/semi-planing design capable of more than 20 knots with the standard Cummins 425hp engine. At 16 knots the Cummins is spinning at 2750rpm and burning 61 litres of diesel per hour (73% engine load); at 8 knots, the fuel burn drops to a miserly 8 litres per hour. 800 litres of fuel should go a fair way.

With her balsa-cored construction, the boat is lightweight, so she quickly gets up and boogies when the power is applied, but careful attention to the hull design means it rides softly and resists being tossed around in a seaway, despite its light displacement. She’s a quiet runner, too, and Beneteau has done a good job under the saloon isolating engine room noise, which barely intrudes when underway.

Brendan and Vicki like the versatility of Rosé’s top speed should they need to get somewhere in a hurry, combined with a comfortable 14-16-knot cruise that quickly eats up the distance on longer journeys and the option of relaxed, economical cruising at displacement speed. All three modes will likely come into play as Rosé becomes the recreational focus for the whole family, including children and grandchildren. The ability to sleep six is bonus, says Vicki.

The well-priced, easily-handled Beneteau Swift Trawler 35 succeeds in offering the space, utility and options list of a much bigger boat. For Vicki and Brendan, she ticks all the boxes.