Motorboat & Yachting Magazine July 2016 Back Issue

BENETEAU SWIFT TRAWLER 30
Members of the Bénéteau sales and marketing team are looking up at the furrowed dark clouds, shrugging shoulders and waving hands like only the French can. They hadn’t, one can assume, gone to the trouble of bagging a handful of berths at the Real Club Nautico de Palma only for the wind and clouds to rudely crash the party uninvited. The resulting sea state is, well, challenging. It’s not a particularly big sea but it is the very definition of a ‘nasty chop’, steep and staccato and barely giving the boat a chance to get into any sort of rhythm. It’s an on-and-off-the throttle sea, one that is too uncomfortable to let the autopilot try and deal with as it’s far better to try and steer the smoothest path manually. Yet the 30 handles it admirably, certainly given its compact dimensions, pushing smoothly through the worst of it with only the occasional slam finding its way through.