The Swift Trawler 34 on the Great Loop Gallop

Written by Stephen Blakely
Beneteau is promoting its Swift Trawler 34 on a four-month passage of the route around eastern North America



The Beneteau Group is known for innovative boats, but for its Swift Trawler 34 it has also cooked up an inventive marketing campaign: Race it around the Great Loop in only four months, get the marine industry to share expenses, bring boating writers on board for different legs to maximize publicity, and then sell it at the end of the trip.

The Great Loop route is increasingly popular with cruisers and Beneteau’s goal is not merely to advertise a new boat but, more ambitiously, to stimulate the market for it as well. If it works, the Swift Trawler 34 will lead the way for the major expansion Beneteau is planning in the U.S. powerboat sector.

Of course, there are risks in sending any boat on a 7,000-mile maiden voyage at a fast clip and on a tight schedule with an ever-changing roster of captains and crew. But even the risks have an upside. Beneteau knows there is the possibility of some sort of failure along the way and that’s partly why people follow these types of endeavors — to see what breaks down or gets bashed up. So the trawler’s ample storage space is packed with spare parts, including a new $4,200 replacement propeller in case the original is damaged en route — which it was, when the boat hit a submerged log in early June on the Trent-Severn Waterway in Ontario, bending two of the prop’s five blades. The boat was hauled at Crate’s Marina and the spare wheel was installed.

“If it were risk-free, we wouldn’t draw some of the reporters and readers,” says Laurent Fabre, head of sales and marketing for Beneteau Powerboats America. “But we want to show how simple it is to drive a single-engine boat and make people realize that doing the Great Loop is affordable, easy and convenient. Things will go wrong and when they do we’ll show how to deal with them. We’ll all learn from it.”

Extended liveaboard cruising, such as on the Great Loop, is exactly what the Swift Trawler 34 is designed for, and its compact size and bow and stern thrusters make it nimble and easy to handle for day trips as well. It is comfortable for two people and adequate for four; low enough in both water draft (3 feet, 7 inches) and air draft (12 feet with the mast down) to clear the Great Loop’s shoals and low bridges; and fast for a trawler, with a semidisplacement hull that cruises at 17 mph and maxes out at 24 mph. It also has one of the most fuel-efficient power plants for any trawler of its size on the market, a key factor in Beneteau’s decision to go with a single screw and a major selling point with the ups and downs of gas prices.

Not too big, not too small, not too slow, not too thirsty — and very comfortable. This boat is designed to ring all the bells for baby boomer boaters. To ensure that these points are not lost on potential buyers, Beneteau named this particular boat The Greatest Loop. It cast off in May from Annapolis, Md., on its circumnavigation of eastern North America and is scheduled to return in September to City Dock — a very ambitious schedule.

The Swift Trawler
The Swift Trawler 34 is the smallest of Beneteau’s trawlers. (There also are 44- and 52-footers and a 42-foot model has been discontinued). Length overall is 36 feet, 7 inches — 32 feet, 9 inches on the waterline — and beam is 13 feet, 1 inch. There are aft and starboard entrances to the pilothouse/saloon, along with transom and starboard hull-side doors. The standard 34 has helm stations inside and on the flybridge, both placed to starboard. (The 34S model has no flybridge.) The side door to the pilothouse is a big help when single-handing. Controls are straightforward and easy to access, and the helm is smooth and responsive.

The layout below features a stateroom forward that comfortably accommodates two, a cabin to port with twin single berths and a head to starboard. The settee in the saloon folds out into a double berth. The saloon/pilothouse is offset slightly to port, allowing the starboard door to open fully, and provides unobstructed visibility from the helm.

The boat’s thrusters provide amazing maneuverability in tight quarters, including the ability to pivot 360 degrees. With a skilled helmsman, such as the captain on our leg, retired Coast Guard navigator Patrick Hopkins, boat control is very impressive. A shallow keel provides some protection to the propeller and rudder in the event of a grounding. Trim tabs help balance the boat at speed.
Beneteau designs and builds its powerboats around the engine, and for the Swift Trawler 34 it chose a single turbocharged Cummins 425-hp QSB5.9 6-cylinder diesel, with a five-blade 26-by-27 RH50 prop. Cummins Onan supplies the diesel generator, which easily fits in the ample storage area under the aft deck hatch. Standard instrumentation is Raymarine.

The galley is small and efficient, with a double sink that cooks will appreciate. The refrigerator is adequate for short trips, but an auxiliary ice chest would be needed for extended cruising away from the dock. Freshwater capacity is 85 gallons.
The suggested retail price for the base Swift Trawler 34 is about $280,000, and options such as a generator, air conditioning and electronics will kick it up to the $350,000 range. The Greatest Loop was tricked out with all those and much more, including an infrared thermal imaging camera on the mast and wireless Internet service, and would retail for about $423,000.

All Swift Trawler models are built in France. The Greatest Loop (hull No. 202) was shipped to Baltimore in March and trucked to Annapolis, where the local Beneteau dealer, Annapolis Yacht Sales, commissioned it. Beneteau plans to start building the Swift Trawler 34 in the United States if the market for it develops, and to make that happen the company opened a powerboat division office last year in Annapolis, which is overseeing The Greatest Loop’s voyage.

Read the full story about the Great Loop Gallop on SoundingsOnline.com

See the Beneteau Swift Trawler boats on display at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show H Dock 804-810