Beneteau Antares 800 (Antares 8.00) Review and Used Buying Guide

The Beneteau Antares 800 in one paragraph

Search for a Beneteau Antares 800 and you will mostly find French listings for a modest white wheelhouse boat with a red or blue boot stripe, a big open cockpit and a single shaft-driven diesel. Beneteau's own heritage archive calls it the Antares 8.00, and the factory brochure printed both names. It belongs to the period when Andre Beneteau personally drew the yard's motorboats, and it was built to do two things at once: carry a family along the coast for a weekend and take three or four people offshore to fish.

The yard placed it in its second Antares generation, which it dates from 1987 to 1990, alongside the 5.60, 6.40, 7.30, 8.60, 9.20, 10.20 and 11.20. European brokers list surviving boats with build years from 1984 to 1989, and the English equipment list we read is dated October 1989, so treat the generation dates as approximate. What matters to a buyer is simpler: this is a 26-footer from the late 1980s, and its condition now depends almost entirely on how its last two owners treated the engine and the deck.

A smaller copy of the Antares 8.60 hull

Beneteau marketed the 800 as the younger sister of the Antares 8.60, a 28-foot cabin cruiser that its brochure says the French lifeboat society SNSM had chosen for robustness and sea behavior. The 800's brochure describes a hull inspired by the 8.60 with a hard chine, a fairly flat run aft for stability at rest, high freeboard and a flared, tulip-shaped bow meant to throw spray well clear. A long keel runs under the boat, faced with a galvanized steel strip that protects the propeller and hull when the boat takes the ground and helps it hold a course in a following sea.

That keel is the detail people forget. It makes the 800 track well at low speed and lets owners in tidal harbors dry out with less anxiety than on a modern outboard boat. It also makes the boat slower to turn and harder to back into a tight slip, since there is no thruster on most hulls and the single shaft walks the stern to one side in reverse.

How fast is it, honestly

Beneteau never published a speed table for the 800 that we could find. Its brochure only claims that the semi-planing hull reaches high speeds with a diesel of reasonable power, keeps that speed in a short chop and is economical to run. The rated engine is 160 hp. For comparison, the bigger 8.60 brochure promised more than 20 knots with engines from 80 to 225 hp, and the 800 is the lighter boat, but no independent test of the 800 has surfaced.

In practice, plan around a comfortable cruise in the low to mid teens and expect less from a boat with a fouled bottom, a heavy fishing load or an engine that no longer makes its rated power. A sea trial with a GPS and a tachometer that has been checked against a handheld tach will tell you more than any old brochure. If the boat cannot reach the engine's rated rpm at wide open throttle, the propeller pitch, the engine or the bottom is wrong.

Wheelhouse, galley and the forward cabin

A wide sliding door opens from the cockpit into a deck saloon with a panoramic windscreen and sliding side windows. The helm sits to port, an unusual arrangement on a boat of this type, with a wheel and a folding seat. Opposite, a dinette surrounds a table that lowers between the benches to make a double berth, and curtains close off the glass at night.

A central passage leads forward. The galley is on the left with a sink, a two-burner stove, cupboards and an icebox, and the head is on the right with a marine toilet, a pressurized shower and an opening port. The forward cabin is fully separate and holds a large double berth with lockers and a hanging locker. The yard lined the interior in wood with matching upholstery and claimed standing headroom in the walkways. That makes the 800 a genuine two-person cruiser, or a four-berth boat if two people do not mind sleeping in the wheelhouse.

The factory list of fittings is short by modern standards: one 125 amp battery, an electrical panel with fuses, a manual bilge pump, mechanical steering, a windscreen wiper and a few lights. Expect most surviving boats to have added an electric bilge pump, a second battery, a chartplotter and often a bow thruster. Check how those additions were wired, because thirty-five years of amateur upgrades can hide a lot.

A cockpit set up for rods rather than sunbathing

The brochure is explicit that the luxury inside did not cost the boat its fishing role. The cockpit is deep and open so several people can fish without bumping elbows, the aft benches lift out so an angler can brace against the transom, and a large locker swallows tackle and gear. A stainless pulpit runs around the deck to the cockpit, with grab rails on the roof and the wheelhouse, and an anchor well sits on the foredeck.

For a US owner that layout makes sense in the Northeast, the Chesapeake or the Pacific Northwest, where a heated, enclosed helm and a seakindly hull matter more than a swim platform. It makes less sense in Florida, where an open cockpit with no shade and a hot wheelhouse are hard to love in August.

Hull, deck and the diesel that sets the price

Beneteau built the hull from hand-laid fiberglass with an isophthalic gelcoat that it said had been chosen for resistance to water penetration, and it claimed its resins had been tested for 1,000 hours at 60 degrees before use. The deck is a GRP and balsa sandwich for stiffness and insulation. That combination has held up well on most hulls, but balsa cores can rot where water has crept in around fittings, rails and the windscreen frame.

The engine deserves the closest look. Many boats have the original 1980s Volvo Penta diesel, and parts for older Volvo blocks are increasingly expensive or scarce. A repower with a modern diesel is possible but will often cost more than the boat. Ask for oil analysis, a compression test and evidence of recent work on the raw water pump, heat exchanger, exhaust elbow and cutless bearing.

Fuel lives in two 158 liter stainless tanks. Stainless tanks of that age can corrode where they sit on wet pads or under straps, so inspect them with a light and a mirror and look for diesel weeping into the bilge.

Finding and importing an Antares 800

The Antares 800 was built and marketed for European coastal water, and nearly every example for sale today is in France, Belgium, the Netherlands or the UK. Asking prices we found ranged from about 13,500 to 23,500 euros, with the best maintained boats near the top. A boat with a recent engine overhaul can justify a premium; one with an original, smoking diesel is a project.

Budget for a survey by someone who knows older French boats, shipping on a cradle, US customs entry and the cost of making 230 volt shore power and any metric fittings work in an American marina. Once landed, the 800 costs little to keep: a single diesel, a 26-foot slip and no outboards to replace. Our ownership estimate of $5,000 to $11,000 a year covers slip or mooring, insurance, haul-out, bottom paint and routine engine service, excluding any major repair.

The 8.60 before it, the 8.05 after it

Do not confuse the 800 with its relatives. The Antares 8.60 is the larger 8.60 m boat introduced in early 1983 with single or twin diesels from 80 to 225 hp and a 3.00 m beam. The Antares 8.05 belongs to the third generation that Beneteau dates from 1990 to 2001; listings put it at about 8.10 m by 2.95 m, and that generation is the one Beneteau associates with Andre Beneteau's patented double-tunnel hull. Much later names, such as the outboard Antares 8 of 2012 onward and the Antares 8.80 of 2011, are entirely different boats.

If a listing says only Antares 8, check the length, the beam and whether the boat has an inboard diesel or outboards. A 2.86 m beam and a single shaft-driven diesel point to the 800.