I have a fair amount of experience with a shoal draft version of the bigger 38s5. I generally like these boats. Nicely detailed and reasonably well built for coastal stuff. My biggest gripes is that so much of the boat is hidden behind liners that it is hard to reach obscured components and work on them. I also think that the sprayed on
varnish finishes are hard for an individual to maintain over the life of the vessel. Still these gripes are true of most new boats these days.
As far as sailing ability goes, these are nice sailing boats but you definitely give a fair amount away with the shoal draft keels. There is two parts to this. First of all the deeper draft (as least on the 38s5)Beneteau''s keels are lead vs cast iron on the shallower keels. This means that the shallow keel have a lot more wetted surface and so a lot more drag. When you combine this with decreased lift it means a significant loss in speed as well as true angle off of the wind. (i.e. the boat seems to point almost as high but makes more leeway)
That said, I am not sure that the loss of speed and VMG would make much of a difference if you are not racing. PHRF says there''s a 12 sec a mile difference between the Wing Keel and the deep keel. That is a fair large amount to give up but for the kind of sailing that you are proposing its not all that terrible. With my own preferences being what they are, if I had my heart set on a First 35s5 I would probably try to find a deep keel version. If I needed shoal draft the shoal draft vension would have to do.
Jeff
