2000 Beneteau First 36 — Tampa, FL 33606

A 2000 Beneteau 36 Center Cockpit lying at Tampa, asking $59,900 through Murray Yacht Sales. The hull is a Berret-Racoupeau drawing and the layout is the argument: the cockpit moves forward so the owner's cabin can take the full beam aft, the saloon raised over the passage between them. Beneteau built the type from 1998 to 2002 as the liveaboard end of the Oceanis range — 36.4 ft, 12.5 ft of beam, 5 ft of draft. Interior volume for the length is what it is known for.

The published record is not uniformly kind. Reviewers put her behind the fleet to windward in a chop, note that she grows tender as she heels and wants reefing early, and call stowage tight for the volume. Off the wind and at anchor is where it pays. We hold no survey, condition note or time-on-market for this boat — what follows is market position, not an inspection.

At $59,900 the ask reads mid-fleet: under the same-year, same-length Beneteau we carry, over the smaller and newer boats nearby. It belongs among liveaboard sailboats and monohulls under $100k. The boats below are neighbours, not sisters.

The nearest like-for-like is a 2000 Beneteau 361 at Port Henry, New York — same yard, same year, same length, the conventional aft cockpit instead, and $16,100 more:

If the centre cockpit is the reason you are here, six more feet of it lie at Marina Del Rey: a 1997 Hunter Passage 42, $9,100 above this ask:

Where the opposite instinct leads — less boat, newer, cheaper — a 2003 Oceanis 331 at Key Biscayne is the same yard three years on, $10,000 under, same coast:

But if the aft cabin and the dry, protected helm are the brief, this is the one to survey first: