CNB sailboats: from a Bordeaux custom yard to Solaris's own brand
Construction Navale Bordeaux has operated under three identities since 1987: an independent custom yard on the Garonne, a semi-custom builder inside the Beneteau group, and, since 2021, a brand owned by the Italian yard Solaris. Two sailors, Dieter Gust and Olivier Lafourcade, started the company on the riverbank in Bordeaux, and Gust's own path — sailor, shipyard welder, skipper of large yachts, and pioneer of crewed charter before he founded CNB — set the tone for a yard that built one-off yachts by hand well before it built a production line. One name has carried across all three eras: naval architect Philippe Briand, who drew CNB's first fully custom project in 1989 and has continued designing for the brand into its current ownership.
Origins and ownership
CNB's first decade and a half were custom work. Briand's Mari-Cha II, launched in 1989, was the first project built entirely by CNB, and Groupe Beneteau later credited it with establishing the yard's reputation for excellence and innovation. CNB joined Beneteau in 1992; Gust served first as CNB's own chief executive and, until 2019, as chief executive of Groupe Beneteau's entire Boat Division. Beneteau's tribute to Gust, following his death, credited him with a decisive role in developing the group's Lagoon multihull line as well as founding CNB. Separately, on April 2, 2021, Groupe Beneteau signed the agreement selling the CNB Yacht Builders brand to Solaris; brand director Vincent Arnaud stayed on with CNB through the change.
The designers
Briand's connection to CNB runs the length of the brand's history. Yachting World has credited him with designs behind more than 12,000 boats across a career spent working with yards including Alloy Yachts, Groupe Beneteau, Perini Navi, Royal Huisman, and Vitters, and Briand has named the CNB 76 among his proudest production-boat successes, alongside the Jeanneau 64. The Bordeaux 60 split design credit two ways: Briand Yacht Design drew the exterior, while the interior went to Couëdel Hugon Design, a two-time International Superyacht Award winner. The CNB 66 came from a three-way pairing at the CNB design office — Briand alongside Jean-Marc Piaton and Rafaël Bonet.
Construction through the eras
CNB's custom period ran until 2008, when Chrisco closed out a run of 46 custom projects. The Bordeaux 60, launched in 2008 or 2009 depending on the source, became CNB's first semi-custom model, drawing on more than twenty years of the yard's superyacht design and building expertise; 46 hulls were eventually produced. The CNB 66, unveiled in 2017, shared an assembly workshop with the larger CNB 76 — a feat CNB attributed to module-based construction paired with tight manufacturing quality control — and the 66 could be fitted with a hydraulic furling boom developed through an exclusive collaboration with rigging maker Hall Spars. When Solaris acquired the brand in 2021, the 66 and 76 were still being built at Groupe Beneteau's Monfalcone, Italy site; production shifted gradually to Solaris's own yard, about 20 kilometers away, starting in 2022. The CNB 78, the first model launched entirely under Solaris ownership, moved away from the Beneteau group's industrial modular build technique toward more traditionally laminated-in bulkheads.
Lines and generations
The semi-custom range CNB built inside Beneteau centered on two models: the Bordeaux 60, and, from 2013, the CNB 76, which the yard's own history calls a class best-seller with 32 units sold. Both the 76 and the 66 are now discontinued — CNB describes them as "our first loves" it no longer builds. Under Solaris, the brand introduced new hulls rather than reviving the old ones: the CNB 78 arrived in 2023, and the CNB 62 followed in 2025. Trade and yachting press have described the 62 as a successor to the Bordeaux 60, calling it a "natural successor" and a "worthy heir" to that earlier semi-custom flagship. CNB's custom-era work, by contrast, produced one-offs that still turn up individually — Mari-Cha II among them, alongside yachts such as Grand Bleu Vintage and the 117-foot Hamilton II, commissioned for Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan of France, who died before it launched.
Who CNB is for
CNB's history points toward buyers who want a large cruising yacht built with semi-custom flexibility rather than off a fixed catalog. Blue Water Sailing described the CNB 76 as exactly that arrangement — a production boat, not a custom one, able to draw on Groupe Beneteau's economies of scale — and CNB carried the same semi-custom approach into new ownership with the 78 and 62. The brand's design record, anchored by Briand across three ownership eras, together with early recognition such as CNB's 2002 International Superyacht Society Design Award and its 2003 Grand Prix de l'Élégance at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, points to a yard built around long-running design partnerships rather than a rotating cast of names.
