Beneteau First 40.7Review & Buyer’s Guide: The Racer-Cruiser Standard Explained
What you’d actually do with her
This is a production racer-cruiser built for active sailing with a crew. Typical use: weeknight club races and weekend regattas with no modifications, since the model has been a fixture of rated fleets for decades; on holiday, a week or two of passages between harbours with the family, and three cabins mean you can bring a full crowd. She sails faster than most cruising boats of this size, so daily runs get longer and your weather window gets wider. The model has raced and won offshore, including multi-day events, and a prepared crew can take her across an ocean. A full racing crew sails her hard; a couple handles her in cruising mode. What she is not built for is living aboard for months at a time: this is a boat of the marina and the season, not a floating home.
The boat they bought eight hundred times
Most boats have a biography made of shipyards and owners. The First 40.7 has a biography made of two court hearings, one government accident report, and roughly eight hundred hulls sold.
In the late 1990s Beneteau asked Bruce Farr’s office, the same office whose designs had won the America’s Cup and round-the-world races, to do something close to impossible: a racing machine that could be sold by the hundreds each year as a family cruiser. Farr’s team delivered. The boat won the Sydney Hobart, the Middle Sea Race, the Commodore’s Cup. She became the standard forty-footer of a generation: charter fleets, sailing schools, club divisions on every continent.
Then, in May 2014, one of those hulls, a boat named Cheeki Rafiki returning from Antigua to England, lost her keel in mid-Atlantic. Four men died. The British Marine Accident Investigation Branch took the construction apart down to the last bolt and published a report the sailing community is still reading. Ever since, every conversation about buying a 40.7 begins with the same question.
That question is not “is this a good boat.” She is, and the sales figures and silverware settled that long before the tragedy. The question is what happened in the life of the particular hull in front of you. On this model, more than any other in its class, the price of that answer has been measured.
“Many 40.7s on the market are workhorses receiving no mercy when raced. So its always a good idea to have a competent surveyor have a look before you pull the trigger.”
The story: Farr’s office and the Vendée production line
Russ Bowler of Farr Yacht Design put the brief plainly: the task was “to develop a cruiser that could be raced at the club level, and that would sell hundreds each year.” The Annapolis office spent about three years on the project, an unusually long gestation for a production boat. The hull grew out of Farr’s IMS pedigree: a relatively fine bow for upwind work, straight runs aft for speed on open courses. The drawings carry design number 354.
Beneteau was by then the largest sailboat builder in the world, and First had been its racing line since 1977. The 40.7 became the most numerous serious racing boat the brand ever made. First hull in 1997, series deliveries from 1999, last hull in 2008. Estimates of the total grow with the date of the source: “some 500” in 2003, “over 800 sold” in a 2009 review. No factory register has ever been published.
The racing record assembled itself quickly. Sequana was the top individual boat at the 1998 Commodore’s Cup. Michael Spies’ First National Real Estate won the 2003 Rolex Sydney Hobart outright in both divisions, IMS and IRC. Thierry Bouchard’s Ad Hoc took the Rolex Middle Sea Race. A boat conceived as a compromise kept winning races that have no mercy for compromises.
The winning 40.7 was described as the “hugely popular Farr design that has sold some 500 boats worldwide.” Winner Michael Spies was 44 and sailing his 27th Hobart. His nearest rival on handicap, 81-year-old John Walker on Impeccable, missed the time limit 15 miles from the finish.
What kind of boat is this — if you’re seeing her for the first time
The First 40.7 is a twelve-metre fibreglass racer-cruiser for anything from a couple to a full racing crew. Three things separate her from a pure cruising forty-footer out of a charter catalogue.
She was drawn to be fast, and the numbers show it. Ballast is 39% of displacement: nearly race-boat territory, and well above the cruisers of her era. A 9/10 fractional rig, rod rigging as standard, hydraulic backstay in the racing package. Below decks, meanwhile: three cabins, a cherry-trimmed saloon and a proper galley. A holiday aboard involves no sacrifices.
She exists with two keels. The deep lead L-keel with a bulb (2.40 m draught) is the standard fit and the racers’ choice. The shallow cast-iron keel (1.90 m) is the option for thin-water regions. The difference is not cosmetic: lead against iron, pointing ability, motion in a seaway. For a buyer, keel type is the first question to ask of any listing.
Her backbone is an internal matrix. The loads from keel, mast and rig are carried by a moulded grid bonded into the hull. This is standard volume-production engineering, fast and light. It also has one property every 40.7 buyer must understand: the bond between matrix and hull is adhesive, and after groundings it can detach. Invisibly, from the outside. That is the central argument of this dossier.
Living with her: the people who’ve sailed one
Upwind in 16 knots, Yachting World’s test logged about 6.5 knots through the water, tacking through 80 degrees; in gusts to 23 the boat carried full main and a number three. The rudder, the tester noted, never lost grip even slightly overpowered.
“Very good up-wind performance in comfort, the very well thought out and spacious cockpit layout, the cruisy interior and the powerful rig. You can sail her very well only with a jib even in race mode (IRC/ORC), no genoa required. But you need inhaulers installed for a good beat performance.”
Off the wind she is in her element, exactly to the extent her rudder allows. Which brings up the great everyday theme of 40.7 ownership.
He called the original rudder “a pig to sail downhill in waves.”
Pushback on the same forum, from the operator of a charter and school fleet: two of his 40.7s had crossed the Pacific on their own keels, one of them three times.
The rudder story has a factory ending. Farr designed the boat around a longer blade; Beneteau fitted a shorter off-the-shelf rudder in series production. The owners of the Hawaiian hulls Green Flash (no. 676) and Cazan (no. 737, the last built) checked their blades against Farr’s templates and found them close to two inches short of the specification, with a matching appetite for rounding up. Beneteau later commissioned updated rudders from Tides Marine with carbon stocks: in factory tests carbon showed four times the breaking strength of the original stainless steel. Original rudder or updated one is the second question to ask of any listing.
Daily life: one interior for all years of production. Three double cabins, six to eight berths, 1.95 m of headroom in the saloon. A single head for the whole crowd is the honest price of a racing layout. The galley gets criticised for a fridge lid that doubles as the entire worktop. And the universal owner’s refrain: these boats leak, most often through the stanchion bases, and a bilge described as teacup-sized gets overwhelmed on heel.
The keel debate: Cheeki Rafiki’s shadow
On 16 May 2014 the First 40.7 Cheeki Rafiki capsized some six hundred miles from Cape Cod after her keel detached. Skipper Andrew Bridge and his three crew were lost. The MAIB, Britain’s marine accident investigators, published Report 8/2015, the most detailed public examination this model has ever received. The community has argued about one thing ever since: was that a verdict on the design, or on the biography of one hull?
The report’s facts. The 40.7’s keel hangs on nine 24 mm stainless bolts cast into the lead, plus a 14 mm bolt at the aft end. The design also called for a matching 14 mm bolt at the forward end; it was never fitted in production, because there was not enough material in the casting to install it effectively. The Wolfson Unit assessed the design against today’s ISO 12215-9 standard and concluded that most of it complied, but the keel bolt washer plates would have needed to be 3 mm thicker and 3 mm wider to fully meet it. Cheeki Rafiki’s own history held at least four groundings and matrix repairs carried out without removing the keel.
And the key finding: during the investigation the MAIB inspected four other First 40.7s. All four had suffered matrix detachments in the bays around the aft end of the keel following groundings. The report states plainly that where the keel attaches to the hull, a detachment is difficult to identify without dropping the keel.
The honest takeaway for a buyer. Hundreds of these hulls have sailed for decades, crossed oceans and won offshore races; the statistics do not support the killer-boat reading. But the MAIB established three things that cannot be unlearned: the construction sits near the lower edge of the modern standard; matrix detachment after grounding is a widespread pattern, not a one-off defect; and finding it without removing the keel is hard. What follows is not a verdict on the model but a purchase protocol: grounding history and matrix condition are not items on the checklist. They are its spine. For the record, no detachment of the shallow cast-iron keel has ever been documented; every known incident involves the deep lead version.
Buying a used First 40.7: problems and what to check
From here on, this dossier switches to survey mode. Print this section and take it to the boat.
Matrix and keel assembly: the spine of the survey
Have the surveyor sound the matrix along its full length, with particular attention to the bays around the aft end of the keel (the classic detachment zone after groundings) and the forward sections (the slamming zone; on the 40.7 the forward and aft matrix bays are bonded only, not laminated to the hull). Rust staining around the keel bolt nuts is a marker straight from the MAIB report. For a hull with a racing biography the ideal scenario is dropping the keel; owners who race seriously treat this as routine. One of them: “I removed the keel and bolt it back three times in the 15 years of ownership.” A seller unwilling to discuss keel removal on a boat with a suspicious history has answered your question.
Hull history, before any hardware
Charter, school, class racing? How many seasons? Study the repair log: any matrix repair done “without removing the keel” is a red flag lifted directly from Cheeki Rafiki’s file. Insurance records and yard invoices tell you more than the seller will.
Rudder and stock
Pull the rudder. Check the stock material (stainless means early and weak, composite or carbon means the updated part), and the bearing play: a known weak point, cured by the Jefa retrofit that Beneteau applied from mid-production, verifiable by hull number through Beneteau service. The precedent is real: the First 40.7 Making Waves sank off Long Island in June 2008 after her rudder tube failed downwind in 20-25 knots. The entire crew was rescued.
Keel type
Deep lead 2.40 m or shallow iron 1.90 m, confirmed by documents rather than the broker’s memory. On the iron keel: coating condition and corrosion along the root.
Deck and leaks
The deck is balsa-cored: moisture readings around hardware and especially the stanchion bases, the leak source owners name first. Test the bilge pumping arrangement; the standard bilge is small.
Rig
Rod rigging: age and replacement history, since rod has a finite life and raced hulls consume it faster. Original running rigging on hulls before no. 156 was poor and has almost certainly been replaced; with what, the inventory should say.
Engine
Volvo Penta MD2030 of around 30 hp on a saildrive: hours, saildrive diaphragm replacement history, folding propeller condition.
First 40.7 price and market: the class’s cash counter
The First 40.7 market is the opposite of scarcity. This is one of the most liquid serious forty-footers in the world, with dozens of listings live globally at any moment. Price anchors (market snapshot: August 2026): in the US, $94-120k for 2001-2007 hulls; in Europe, €50-90k as the main corridor with refitted late examples reaching about €110k; in the UK, £52-95k. One firm historical point: a new boat cost £92,132 ex-VAT in 2007.
The spread inside the model is wider than the spread between it and its neighbours, and biography explains it. A campaigned hull with its resource spent and a pampered cruising sister of the same year can sit a factor of one and a half to two apart. The market knows this; sellers of never-raced boats put that fact in the headline.
The practical conclusion: you don’t hunt for a First 40.7, you select one. The survey budget matters more than the purchase budget here. A full structural inspection with the keel dropped costs a small fraction of the boat and removes the model’s one defining risk.
Market snapshot: August 2026. This section is updated with each revision.
First 40.7 vs J/120, X-412 and Sun Fast 40.3: what buyers actually compare
J/120 is the main American rival: nearly a tonne lighter, a higher ballast ratio, a sprit and asymmetrics against the 40.7’s symmetrical kites. Less accommodation, a two-cabin layout, a third of the production run, and noticeably more money for a comparable year. The community’s formula: the J/120 is the purer racer, the 40.7 is more boat for the money.
X-412 is the Danish school: heavier, stiffer, with a steel frame at the root of the structure taking keel and rig loads. The exact philosophical opposite of the 40.7’s bonded matrix, and a frequent choice of buyers whom the MAIB report scared more than the price attracted. Slower on rating, finer in execution.
Sun Fast 40.3 is the compatriot in the same listings and money: heavier, with a lower ballast ratio, but younger on average across the market and with a twin-wheel cockpit. Closer to a cruiser with racing ambitions than a racer with cabins.
Dufour 40 Performance, the 2005 IMS world champion, shows up in the same French listings at the same money, and rarely outside them.
The choice formula as the community has settled it: maximum racing pedigree and class for minimum money, First 40.7; purer racing and stronger resale, J/120; structural reassurance and Scandinavian build, X-412; younger hulls and a cruising tilt, Sun Fast 40.3.
J/120
X-Yachts X-412
Sun Fast 40.3
Open questions
The exact production total is unknown: estimates run from 550 to over 800, no register exists, and this dossier carries a working range of 700-800 from the latest sources. The new-boat price history by year has not been reconstructed beyond the single 2007 UK figure. The share of hulls that received the Jefa bearing retrofit and the updated Tides Marine rudder is unknown, as is the logic by which the yard rolled changes into the series. And first-hand heavy-weather accounts in 30 knots and above, with the crew’s own conclusions, remain thinner than we’d like: a subject for owner interviews. Their answers will appear in the next revision.
Beneteau First 40.7 specifications (1997–2008)
| Hull length | 11.92 m |
| Length overall | 12.17 m |
| Waterline length | 10.62 m |
| Beam | 3.78 m |
| Light displacement | 6,970 kg |
| Ballast | 2,707 kg lead (deep) / 2,700 kg iron (shallow) |
| Ballast ratio | 39% |
| Draught | 2.40 m (deep) / 1.90 m (shallow) |
| Upwind sail area | 94.9 m² |
| Rig | 9/10 fractional, aluminium spar (carbon option), rod rigging |
| Engine | Volvo Penta MD2030, approx. 30 hp, saildrive |
| Fuel / water | 138 / 272 L |
| Construction | solid GRP hull, balsa-cored deck, bonded structural matrix |
| CE category | A |
| Design | Farr Yacht Design, project no. 354 |
| Built | approx. 700–800 (estimate; no register published) |
FAQ
How much does a used Beneteau First 40.7 cost?
The main corridor is €50-90k in Europe and $94-120k in the US (snapshot: August 2026), with refitted late hulls above that. The spread within the model is driven by a hull’s biography more than by its year.
Is the First 40.7 safe after the Cheeki Rafiki accident?
The MAIB report neither condemned the model nor found a fatal design defect. It showed that matrix detachment after groundings is widespread and hard to detect. The practical conclusion is not "don’t buy" but "buy only with a full structural survey," ideally with the keel dropped on any hull with a racing history.
What should I check first when buying a First 40.7?
The matrix and keel assembly (sounding, staining at the bolts, grounding history), the rudder (stock material, bearings), deck moisture, rod rigging age, and the hull’s full biography: charter, school, racing.
What’s the difference between the deep and shallow keel versions?
The deep keel (2.40 m) is a lead L-keel with a bulb, the standard fit, and points higher. The shallow keel (1.90 m) is cast iron, made for thin water, and gives up ground upwind. All documented keel-loss incidents involve the deep lead version; none is recorded for the iron keel.
First 40.7 or J/120?
The J/120 is lighter, sportier and pricier, with less room below. The 40.7 offers three cabins, a living class, a cheap entry and an enormous choice of hulls, on the strict condition of a thorough survey.
Method: this dossier was assembled from MAIB Report 8/2015 (the primary source on the structure and the Cheeki Rafiki case), the Yachting World sea trial, reviews in Practical Sailor, SpinSheet, Sailing World and MySailing, the Rolex Sydney Hobart archives, owner threads on Sailing Anarchy, SailNet, Hisse-et-Oh, Cruisers Forum and the beneteau-owners group, and brokerage listings and archives from the US, France, Germany and the UK, 2016-2026. Quotes are reproduced verbatim where the source is English. Where sources disagree, we either resolved the conflict with data (production years, the Jazz incident, which involved the later First 40 rather than the 40.7) or left it honestly open (the production total). Owner interviews are underway; their testimony will join the next revision.