Grand Large Yachting : Bold Bluewater Boats
Most sailors know the names Outremer, Gunboat, Garcia, Allures, and many know RM and ORC. Fewer know that all six now answer to the same owner. Grand Large Yachting is the quiet parent that has built one of the most complete portfolios of ocean-cruising brands in the world, and it did so almost by accident.
It started with a boat that did not exist
Stéphan Constance and Xavier Desmarest met as engineering students. Years later, planning a family sabbatical under sail, the two friends went looking for the right long-distance cruiser and found nothing that fitted.
Their frustration turned out to be widely shared, and in 2003 they founded Allures Yachting in Cherbourg to build the boat they could not buy: an aluminium bluewater cruiser that rethought the integral-centreboard concept. The formula worked. The Allures 40 was voted Boat of the Year in France in 2005, and demand grew quickly.
Allures 40.9, their latest 40 footer
A group built by acquisition
Growth by takeover was never the plan. Constance has said external growth was not on the agenda. But when the respected catamaran yard Outremer, founded in 1984 at La Grande-Motte, ran into trouble, the pair stepped in and bought it in 2007. That decision set the pattern for the next 15 years.
Garcia Yachts, the Normandy aluminium specialist founded in 1974, followed in 2010, relaunched around the Trawler 54 and then the Exploration range. The American carbon-catamaran brand Gunboat joined in 2016, with production relocated to La Grande-Motte alongside Outremer. La Rochelle’s RM Yachts, formerly Fora Marine, came into the group in 2020, bringing its plywood-epoxy expertise. In 2023, marking the group’s twentieth year, Grand Large Yachting acquired Marsaudon Composites in Lorient and with it the ORC (Ocean Rider Catamarans) brand.
Around the sailing brands sit the supporting businesses: Grand Large Services (2010) for training, maintenance, refit and resale; the professional aluminium workboat yard Alumarine (2013); day-charter catamaran builder Ocean Voyager (2015); and the marine joinery Griffon Marine (2016). Constance chairs the group as president, with Desmarest as chief executive. In 2023 a new set of investors, including Raise Invest, Épopée Gestion and iXO Private Equity, took a minority stake, replacing the previous backer. The group now runs several production sites across France and employs more than 500 people, and it is regularly described as the country’s leading builder of grand-cruising sailing yachts.
The Philosophy
The yacht sale is the beginning, not the end
What holds this collection together is the customer they have in mind: the sailor who casts off and crosses oceans, whether that means the tropics or high latitudes. Grand Large Yachting frames its work around four values: respect, listening, excellence and service, and the last of those is the one that shapes the business. The relationship is designed to run from first conversation through construction, delivery, training, maintenance and eventual resale.
That is why the service arm exists, why the group runs technical training in areas such as remote medicine, diesel maintenance and marine electrics, and why it organises long-distance owner rallies. It is also why each brand keeps its own identity. Allures aluminium, Gunboat carbon, RM plywood-epoxy and Outremer composite are different solutions, and the group lets each yard cross-pollinate expertise without erasing what makes it distinct.
Six Brands
Allures Yachting
The founding brand, built around an aluminium hull married to a composite deck and coachroof, with an integral centreboard for shoal draught and drying out. The Allures 51.9 sits at the heart of the current range and was a finalist for European Yacht of the Year 2022, in the same bluewater category as its cousin the Outremer 55.
Outremer
The performance-cruising catamaran benchmark, built at La Grande-Motte. The Outremer 55, designed by VPLP with styling by Patrick le Quément, won European Yacht of the Year 2022 in the bluewater cruiser category. Light for its size at around 13.5 tonnes, with daggerboards and an optional carbon rig, it is quick enough to outrun weather yet set up for shorthanded family passages. It was Outremer’s fourth win at the awards after the 49, the 5X and the 4X.
Gunboat
The uncompromising end of the spectrum: all-carbon, race-derived cruising cats. The VPLP-designed Gunboat 68 came out of the yard at under 18 tonnes, with wave-piercing bows, daggerboards and retractable rudders, and a forward helm position that is pure Gunboat. The 72 extends the 68’s hull and adds a flybridge for cruising, and the larger 80 carries the concept further still.
Garcia Yachts
Aluminium expedition boats for sailors heading off the chart. The Garcia Exploration 45, conceived with round-the-world authority Jimmy Cornell and designed by Berret-Racoupeau, was built with the Northwest Passage in mind: a centreboarder with a protected inside steering position, deck saloon, full thermal insulation and watertight bulkheads. The Explocat 52, Garcia’s aluminium catamaran drawn by Pierre Delion, took Multihull of the Year in 2021 and brought the same go-anywhere brief to two hulls.
Garcia Explocat
RM Yachts
The outlier, and proud of it. RM builds fast cruising monohulls in La Rochelle using an epoxy-impregnated plywood composite, a technique that produces stiff, light, hard-chined hulls with warm, dry, condensation-free interiors. The design partner is Marc Lombard Design Group, whose racing background shows in the range. The RM 1180, launched in 2019, is a 39-footer with an aggressive plumb bow and near panoramic saloon visibility that became a reference point for modern plywood-epoxy cruising.
RM 1080
ORC (Ocean Rider Catamarans)
The most recent addition, from Marsaudon Composites, founded in 1999 and based in the former submarine base at Lorient, deep in France’s offshore-racing heartland. Built to a strict weight discipline (simplify, then reduce weight more), the range began as the TS series designed by Christophe Barreau and was renamed ORC in 2020. The ORC 52.2 weighs around 10.5 tonnes and can post 350-mile days, while the larger ORC 57 flagship, designed by Marc Lombard, adds live-aboard comfort without giving up the speed.
ORC 57
All the Bases
Between them, these six brands cover every way to build a boat that goes to sea: aluminium for strength and high latitudes, carbon for outright speed, plywood-epoxy for a light stiff hull at a distinct price, and high-tech composite for the performance-cruising middle ground.
Grand Large Yachting has turned a set of specialist yards into a grand-cruising powerhouse, aimed at the owner who rates a boat not at the marina, but in the oceans it can cross.