Allures sailboats: an aluminum bluewater builder born from an unfinished search
Allures Yachting is a French yacht builder founded in 2003, born from the ambition of two school friends, Stéphan Constance and Xavier Desmaret. According to Allures and Garcia sales and marketing manager Cyrille Corlay, the two were sailors who couldn't find the right boat for a circumnavigation they wanted to make, so — having earned some money at Boston Consulting — they hired naval architect Olivier Racoupeau to design a concept boat instead. That initial concept also drew on advice from sailor Michel Desjoyeaux and architect Marc Van Peteghem. What emerged, the Allures 44, became the yard's first model in 2003, and final assembly of the earliest boats took place inside the CMN workshops in Cherbourg, a yard normally associated with very large commercial and military vessels. From that starting point, Allures built a range around a single structural idea — aluminum hulls suited to voyaging in demanding waters — that has carried through two decades, a takeover, and a full model-name renewal.
Origins and ownership
Per Corlay's account, the company was founded and began production in 2003 as a small operation built around Constance and Desmaret's own search for a boat. The defining turn came in 2010, when Allures took over Garcia Yachts, a specialist aluminum builder in the same Cherbourg orbit; the yard's own history calls the acquisition a defining moment for the company. Production had already scaled by then: by 2010, Allures was producing 15 units a year and had moved into a new, consolidated Cherbourg building that brought every stage of assembly under one roof. The combined operation sits inside the Grand Large Yachting group, whose Grand Large Services division works exclusively for six brands — Allures, Outremer, Garcia, Gunboat, RM, and ORC — and whose portfolio, per Lars Reisberg's account for No Frills Sailing, pairs Allures and Garcia as its two best-known names. Marc d'Arbigny serves as CEO of both Allures and Garcia. At the time of a 2018 yard-visit feature, Constance and Desmaret still owned and ran the company, described as happily managing Allures while designing newer generations of boats.
The designers
Allures has worked with one design office across its history, though under different names. Jean Berret, already a noted designer of fast IOR racing boats, ran the practice that a young Olivier Racoupeau joined in 1983; Racoupeau got his name on the door with the formation of Berret-Racoupeau in 1994, and when Berret retired in 2007 he left Racoupeau in charge of a 13-person team that includes his wife, Isabelle, who heads the firm's interior-design division. Racoupeau himself designed the first Allures 44 in 2003, and Berret-Racoupeau describes itself as one of the first naval-architecture firms to build an in-house design team around three skill sets — naval architecture, exterior design, and interior design; SAIL Magazine cited the firm's separate Amel 60 project as a case where the same team handled both interior and exterior work, a dual capability the firm says sets it apart from many competitors. That in-house interior capacity hasn't always extended to Allures' own boats: Darnet Design credits itself with the interior of the Allures 51, describing work done in cooperation with Berret-Racoupeau's naval architecture and exterior design, while later boats such as the 51.9 credit Berret-Racoupeau for both the architecture and the interior.
Construction through the eras
Allures builds on a single structural premise: welded aluminum hulls carrying fiberglass-composite decks, rather than an all-metal build. Yard staff describe the composite deck as a distinct brand feature, and say the aluminum hull alone is rigid enough that a boat could sail safely with no deck attached at all. That pairing recurs across the range: SAIL Magazine, reviewing the 45.9, called the composite deck and transom over a metal hull a "hidden difference" from all-aluminum construction, and Cruising World separately described the same composite-deck approach on the 51.9 as a choice made for ease of maintenance and weight savings. Cruising World also noted, on both the 45.9 and the 51.9, that the hull's foam-and-neoprene insulation produces a distinctly quiet interior underway. Both Allures and Garcia boats share the benefit of variable draft, and the yard settled on a lifting daggerboard rather than another centerboard mechanism for that purpose. Every boat is built, per yard staff, entirely in Normandy, and staff describe keeping an aluminum hull's advantages intact as depending on three things: mass-free electrics, sound anodes, and a proper anti-fouling job. Yard staff also point to the 2008 financial crisis as a period that hit the French boating industry especially hard, pushing a number of brands into bankruptcy, insolvency, sale, or closure.
Lines and generations
The Allures 40 and Allures 51 joined the 44 quickly after that first model, filling out an early three-boat range. After the Garcia takeover, Allures renamed and renewed the lineup: the 45 replaced the 44, the 52 succeeded the 51 in 2016, and the 40 evolved into the 39.9. The 45.9, introduced in 2017, continued the 44-and-45 lineage with a modernized look and a new roof-window design, and the range was completed in 2021 by the 51.9 — the first Allures model to offer an aft cabin and a long, welcoming cockpit. The 40.9 also fills the range between the 39.9 and the 45.9. With the 2025 Horizon 47, Allures introduced what it calls the Horizon Frame Concept, designed once again by Racoupeau — lowered side-decks, secure bulwarks, and windows roughly 80 centimeters tall running along the hull.
Who Allures is for
Allures targets a buyer chasing genuine passage-making rather than coastal cruising in fair-weather waters. An Allures 44 named Opale completed the Northwest Passage in 2019, and an Allures 45 named Myriades spent a southern summer working the channels of Patagonia between Ushuaia and the Chiloé archipelago the same year — evidence more than marketing for what the range is built to do. Those routes match the pitch built into the hull itself: an aluminum structure paired with variable draft, aimed at sailors who want to reach places a fixed-keel fiberglass boat can't follow. Sitting inside the Grand Large Yachting group alongside Garcia, Outremer, Gunboat, RM, and ORC, Allures fills the expedition-cruising monohull slot in that broader roster.
