Freshly launched FIRST 36 SE shines at her maiden race: 2025 ORC double-handed world championship
Even though this was more of a discovery race, where her naval designer, Samuel Manuard and known First SE community weather guru Jure Jerman had the goal of feeling her for the first time and identifying strengths and weaknesses, she surprised the team and competitors with her pace.
The race proved to be a 165-mile long windward / leeward course, which naturally wouldn’t suit 36SE. But even from the blocks she showed amazing VMG speeds, finishing in 3rd place, mere 1 minute behind the 2nd, in an extremely competitive fleet of 29 boats from the ORC group Class B.
Crew Members Insights
It was a wonderful race. Our main goal was to learn more about the boat and her behaviour. This is only the beginning, but I’m really pleased with the First 36 SE’s dynamic and speed. We started strong, had a great pace, and some very good moments in light winds. However, when the wind shifted in the middle of the night off Istria, it took us too much time to come up with proper trim. This happens when you are not used to the boat; t is difficult to know the target speed. For instance, we now know that her VMG target speeds in 12kt of wind are around 7.2–7.4 knots.
Photo credits: Vid Slapničar
With the conditions we saw, light wind suited her well. She is good at reaching—we had a short reach where we were immediately up to speed, while for VMG, you really have to fight hard. The feeling is very pleasant on board, but there is a lot to be improved, obviously; now we were only scratching the surface. Performance depends significantly on sail configuration and the transitions you make during the race. Unfortunately, we missed one transition, and the first two boats pulled away for a couple of miles. After that, with strong crews in front and fairly steady wind all the way to the finish, it was nearly impossible to catch up.
Photo credits: Vid Slapničar
Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun—especially the tacking in light-wind duel with JPK Colombre. All in all, I’m very happy with the First 36 SE.
She is an excellent combination of a cruiser on which you can also have fun high level racing—and I think that is fantastic. This race was a great test, and it’s only a starting point for her.
Samuel MANUARD, naval architect and accomplished sailor
Photo credits: Vid Slapničar
I’m not a professional sailor, and this fleet was full of very serious racers. In sport, success usually comes with investment, like training. With the investment we put in here, I think we did well. Sam arrived in Monfalcone on Monday, and the training on Tuesday was too calm to do much.
In racing, you’re always making guesses, and when one goes wrong, it’s hard to recover—we couldn’t catch up anymore. But I learned so much during these two days. If we were to do it again, we’d be much more confident in how to work with the boat. Speaking of the FIRST 36 SE, she was extremely competitive in all kinds of conditions, and my feeling was that we were losing mainly due to our mistakes – so she really deserves all the credit for being fast all around I am really impressed, so congratulations to the design and production team.
Jure JERMAN, First SE community member and coskipper
This result is amazing. We were looking for a race to check the performance of the new First 36SE, and of course, the World Championship would not be our first pick for that. But since it was happening just 20 miles from our test harbour, we decided to engage our First community, borrowed some extra sails and give it a go.
Having Sam onboard gave us so much valuable feedback for future tweaks, but to my great delight, his feedback was that she is a great all-around racer that can satisfy any sailing connoisseur.
From here, we have now started to create plans for 2026. Mostly, we plan to work closely with our future owners on their racing projects, making sure we give them the most fun and competitive platform possible.
Andraž MIHELIN, CEO Seascape and BENETEAU First range manager
Photo credits: Vid Slapničar
Published on 07.10.2025