RICK BROWN, WHO IS IN HIS 60S, IS old enough to know that you never pet the puppy. The problem is, he got on the bus. And at that point, his fate was sealed. Brown and his wife, Brenda, had retired to Florida about 14 years ago from their lakeside home in Indianapolis. There, they'd owned a 20-foot pontoon boat for dinner cruises. In the Sunshine State, they focused their leisure time on golf. In 2018, they decided to try some distance cruising while they were still young enough to enjoy it. On the advice of friends and local captains, they bought a Beneteau Swift Trawler 44. Then came the bus. In 2020, their yacht club in Punta Gorda organized a bus trip to the Miami International Boat Show, where they saw the Beneteau Swift Trawler 41, the boat they own today. "That was a classic 'don't pet the puppy,' because if you pet the puppy, you're liable to leave the store with it," Brown says with a chuckle. Their story is notable because it says as much about the Beneteau brand as it does about the Browns themselves. In just those few years that the couple had been cruising-boat owners, Beneteau Groupe had managed to improve the design of the Swift Trawler model line so much that they felt like they were getting a lot more boat in a shorter length overall. Brown particularly liked the 41's seating, which was better laid out than the 44's. He also liked the fact that the 41 had three staterooms compared with the 44's two. The couple could use that third stateroom for stowage, freeing up even more livable space in the interior. "It's just more comfortable," he says. "Especially on something like a three-night trip or when we go over to the Bahamas, we can just put a lot more gear and spare parts on the boat and have it out of the way." What the Browns experienced was a step in a design process that Groupe Beneteau had begun years earlier, rethinking and revamping its models specifically to appeal to American boaters. While the France-based company-which dates to 1884-has built powerboats for decades, it has more recently placed a strategic focus on building the kinds of powerboats Americans prefer. Beneteau never had a problem as a brand connecting with Americans who prefer to sail, but today, it's a brand that more and more yachtsmen think of as a premiere builder of powerboats. "Now, at boat shows, we're hearing less and less, 'Oh, I didn't know they made powerboats,'" says Barrett Canfield, owner of the Beneteau dealership South Coast Yachts in Southern California. "The satisfying thing, the confidence-building part of that is the brand Beneteau is very respected in the world. Beneteau has actually built powerboats longer than sailboats."
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