From dream to reality
Jean-François Duclos was 20 years old when Bénéteau's First 30 came out at the end of the 1980s. This small 8.95 m sailing yacht, 969 units of which are produced today, made him dream of buying it. He fell in love with it almost 30 years later, in 1999, when he bought Kentan (which means first in Breton), which he found in Switzerland on Lake Geneva and whose new home port is La Trinité sur Mer.
He then turned to the Vendée-based manufacturer for maintenance information, but was in a bad way. For several years, he searched for associations and threw bottles into the sea everywhere.
"It was crazy not to find any information about this boat that made Bénéteau number one in the world. It was their first production yacht built by Mauric, not to be confused with the 30E, a Berret design." explains Jean-François.
The birth of a dynamic association
Finally, following a message left on a forum, he met another owner of First 30, based in Belle-Île. This is how he decided to launch the First 30 association in June 2004. The objective is to obtain information on the maintenance of the boat so that he can tinker with it himself, but also to get together with friends.
While the association once had up to 100 members, it now has only 80 active members. "We're one of the most dynamic non-transportable boat associations with a great Internet presence. Unfortunately, our association is aging. Today, boating is volatile. Young people buy a boat for a specific project, but don't keep it afterwards. Pleasure boating is changing and so is the way it is practiced. Young people prefer to rent rather than buy, we are in a consumer society." details Jean-François.
Today, the average age of the members of the association is about 50 years. "The secretary of the association is 78 and our treasurer is 76, and they're sailing single-handed without a reel, whereas I installed one three years ago ans?!" proudly announces the founder of the association.
Why join association??
For a membership fee of 15 euros per year, each member of the association can benefit from a wealth of information about their boat. In fact, the members of the association have collected all the technical and historical data of the First 30 over the years.
"You want to redo your electrical system, change your keel bolts or your ring from safran?? We have all the maintenance information you need to do this work. We also order small parts such as candlestick legs..." supports Jean-François.
This fee also allows the maintenance of the website or the ordering of clubhouses. But this membership is becoming rare. "For the past 5/6 years, we have found that the boats of our former members that have been sold are no longer members of the association. They continue to consult the site since we have nearly 100?000 unique visits per year for 80 active members", deplores Jean-François.
Every year, the association meets at the Paris Boat Show for the General Assembly and every year, 3 or 4 First 30 undertake a loop of the Atlantic. Moreover, gatherings are also organized by the association. This year 2020, the programme was the Scilly, but the health situation decided otherwise.
The association had also tried to launch a racing program, but it did not take, as the owners of First 30 were not racing sailors. The same is true for large gatherings, with the owners remaining rather in their own watershed. If local events are organised, it is therefore at the initiative of the navigation basin managers.
Census of all First 30
One of the major projects Jean-François would have liked to have carried out is to list the 969 copies of First 30 produced by Bénéteau. A project that he had started to carry out, but stopped 7/8 years ago, due to the difficulty of finding the owners. So if you aidiez??
