NEEL sailboats: an offshore racer's trimaran answer to the cruising catamaran
Eric and Barbara Bruneel launched the NEEL trimaran company in France on a single idea: take the living space of a cruising catamaran and put it on top of the boat's three hulls, instead of down inside a narrow main hull. That idea, and the open "cockloon" layout designer Michel Joubert built around it, carried NEEL from a first production boat in 2011 to a fleet of more than 210 NEEL and LEEN trimarans sailing worldwide by the end of 2025 — the same year the shipyard entered receivership.
Origins and ownership
Bruneel spent 27 years at Fountaine-Pajot, the last ten as managing director, building more than 2,000 cruising catamarans there before taking a sabbatical to build and race his own boat, a 50-foot Joubert-Nivelt-designed trimaran called Trilogic. Aboard Trilogic he won his class in the 2004 OSTAR and the 2005 Fastnet Race, then took second in the 2006 Route du Rhum, before leaving Fountaine-Pajot in 2009 and setting up his own shipyard soon after. Design of the NEEL 50 prototype in 2010 marked the company's first public communications, and by 2011 the NEEL 45 — designed by Joubert-Nivelt to Bruneel's own specifications — became the company's first production boat, earning CE certification as the world's first deep-sea cruising trimaran. Launched in 2012, the 45 went on to sell more than 26 models and competed in that year's ARC across the North Atlantic, taking line honors by more than 24 hours.
The company scaled quickly: a dealer network followed in 2013, the same year NEEL bought land on La Rochelle's plateau nautique for a factory that opened in 2014. A second plant and new offices went up in 2018, the year NEEL also bought its neighbor and subcontractor TechniYachts Pinta, a supplier on several NEEL models, notably the Neel 65. Bruneel approached TechniYachts' owner, Thierry Demier, directly and offered to buy the company while keeping its name and its day-charter-catamaran business; Demier stayed on as CEO through the transition before leaving. By its 10th anniversary in 2020, NEEL had added a second product line, the LEEN range of powered trimarans, and was building about 30 boats a year, a figure it expected to grow to 45 or 50 in 2021. Two more factories and an office building followed in 2021, along with TRIMARAN YACHT CHARTER, a subsidiary set up to rent and sell NEEL trimarans; a further plant in Périgny added 12,300 square meters of production area in 2022, and in 2023 the yard won the "Vague Bleue" label for waste management and the circular economy in the nautical field.
That expansion ran into trouble in 2025. Facing a slowdown in the yachting market and the default of an American customer — after NEEL had chosen to self-finance production of several units without advance payment, weakening its cash position — the shipyard was placed into receivership on December 5, 2025, with more than 210 NEEL and LEEN units sailing worldwide at the time of filing. The La Rochelle Commercial Court appointed three new partners to take over the yard, which had been in financial difficulty since the previous autumn: Martin Volt, who previously headed the maintenance yard Bosco, became the future CEO; Maxime Vedrenne, a former NEEL dealer, was named Managing Director; and Martin Lepoutre, who had led Fora Marine, was tasked with the yard's transition and revival.
The designers
NEEL's design DNA through its first decade came from Bruneel's longtime collaborators, naval architects Michel Joubert and Bernard Nivelt, who worked on the 45, the 65, and the 51. Joubert originated the cockloon concept — treating cockpit and saloon as one continuous inside-outside space — an idea Seahorse Magazine says has been copied by almost every other multihull brand in the market. After Joubert's death, Marc Lombard took over design duties for the range under a brief to carry on in exactly the same direction, starting with the 47 in 2019; Lombard went on to design the 43, calling it the heir to the original 45 that launched the company, and the 52, described as the builder's high-performance family cruiser. Nivelt, meanwhile, turned to NEEL's second line, drawing a range of fuel-efficient trimaran motor yachts for the LEEN brand.
Construction through the eras
Bruneel describes NEEL's build approach as trade-offs favoring long-distance cruising over racing-boat lightness. Almost every part of a NEEL, down to the interiors, is vacuum-infused GRP foam sandwich, using materials the yard says can be recycled at the end of the boat's life. Unidirectional carbon appears only in crucial places like the beams and deck, rather than in the hulls, on the logic that a small hit to a carbon hull could cause major damage on a long cruise. The same logic shapes the boats' hull form: a high bridgedeck clearance to minimize slamming in waves, paired with a shorter-than-average bridgedeck to keep the boat's weight centered.
Lines and generations
The range grew outward from the 45 in both directions. The 65 sits at the top of the line, delivered into commercial charter service from 2015 and later refreshed as the 65 Evolution, which NEEL describes as enhanced material quality and optimized finishes. In the middle of the range, the Joubert-Nivelt-designed 51 gave way in 2023 to the Lombard-designed 52 — replacing, per SAIL Magazine, a model of which around 40 hulls were built — while at the smaller end, the 43 stands as Lombard's direct heir to the original 45, coming off the line at a rate of one boat every two weeks. The 47, Lombard's first design for the range, was built to be, in Bruneel's words, the ideal cruising boat for his own extended family, and went on to win the ARC+ rally outright. Running alongside the sail range, Nivelt's LEEN line applies the same trimaran platform to power cruising.
Who NEEL is for
NEEL is still a young brand — its first production boat only reached the water in 2011 — built entirely on Bruneel's bet that a trimaran, not a catamaran, is the right platform for a cruising family's full-beam living space. Buyers drawn to that idea inherit a design lineage split between two eras, Joubert-Nivelt's founding decade and Lombard's ongoing one, backed by a yard that grew fast, diversified into power trimarans and charter, and, following its 2025 receivership, changed hands under a French court's supervision. That history suits buyers who want a distinct sailing platform more than buyers looking for a decades-deep production record.
