Wauquiez sailboats for sale

Buying a used Wauquiez: a French craftsman's yard that changed hands more than once

A used Wauquiez comes from a yard that built in relatively low volumes throughout its history — even its best-known models, the Centurion 32 and the Prétorien 35, numbered only in the low hundreds of hulls — so buyers should expect a narrower, more patient search than with a mainstream production brand. That specialization has coexisted with real corporate turbulence: Bénéteau owned the yard from 1997, sold it on in 2008, and Wauquiez spent 2009 under a French court's safeguard procedure before further ownership changes preceded EXEL Industries' 2021 acquisition. None of that changes the boats already built, but it does mean a used Wauquiez's history runs through several different stewards rather than one continuous builder — worth knowing before condition and equipment questions take over.

Which era to target

The clearest split in the used fleet runs along design lineage rather than model number. Boats from Wauquiez's first two decades — the Elizabethan 29 and 35, the Centurion 32, Amphitrite, Amphora, Gladiateur, and Prétorien — carry Kim Holman and Holman & Pye's design hand, generally smaller, sportier cruisers built between the mid-1960s and 1979. Ed Dubois redrew the Centurion line in the mid-1980s, with the Centurion 47 arriving in 1984 and the Centurion 38 and 36 in 1987, as larger, more overtly performance-oriented boats. A more decisive break came in 2000, when Jean Berret and Olivier Racoupeau introduced the raised-saloon Pilot Saloon line with the Pilot Saloon 40 — a shift toward passagemaking visibility and comfort that carried through later Pilot Saloon sizes. The newest design generation, under Marc Lombard, began with the Opium 39 in 2010 and runs through the 2024 flagship Wauquiez 55. Buyers who want the brand's original sporting character should look toward the Holman & Pye- or Dubois-designed boats; buyers prioritizing passagemaking comfort should look toward the Pilot Saloon line.

Navigating the lineup

Size tracks loosely with era across the range: the 2013 Optio, at under 30 feet, is the smallest boat in the lineup, the early Centurion- and Prétorien-era boats run in the low-to-mid-30s, and the Pilot Saloon line spans from the low 40s up to the Pilot Saloon 60 near 61 feet. A buyer working from a size target can use that spread to narrow between design eras before comparing individual boats on the full model directory on this page.