Outremer sailboats: daggerboard catamarans built for offshore speed
Outremer traces its identity to a single catamaran Gérard Danson built at La Grande-Motte, on the French Mediterranean coast, in 1984. What began as a fast, offshore-capable cruiser has stayed the brand's defining idea through a change of ownership and several generations of designers since: hulls light enough to sail fast and strong enough, in Yachting World's words, to do laps of the globe, carried on daggerboards rather than fixed keels for genuine upwind ability. Outremer now operates within the Grand Large Yachting group, still building primarily from that same La Grande-Motte yard, where, by its own account, nearly 450 Outremers now sail worldwide.
Origins and ownership
Danson founded Outremer in La Grande-Motte in 1984 and ran it as an independent shop for two decades. His death in 2005 closed that founding chapter. In 2007, Xavier Desmarest and Stéphan Constance — who four years earlier had founded the Grand Large Yachting group, since grown to five shipyards run out of France and the United States — bought the shipyard and relaunched production. Multihulls World later described the Outremer 49, an early model of that new era, as arriving after "a troubled period, linked to the sudden disappearance of the founder-architect," and marking the yard's recovery. Outremer today sits inside Grand Large Yachting alongside sibling brands including Allures, Garcia, and Gunboat.
The designers
Danson designed Outremer's founding-era boats himself, including the original 45, which Darnet Design's own project page later called "the mythical Outremer 45 designed by Gérard Danson." The generation that followed carries the joint signature of naval architects Christophe Barreau and Frédéric Neuman, credited on Barreau's own site with designing the 49 for transoceanic family voyages; that Barreau-Neuman partnership went on to shape the 51 and a completely redesigned 45. Van Peteghem Lauriot Prevost, the naval architecture office also known for the AC45 America's Cup catamarans, has drawn several of the newer models, including the 5X and, per Yachting World, a further-redesigned 55. Exterior styling has come from Patrick Le Quément, interior architecture from Franck Darnet Design.
Construction through the eras
Outremer's build philosophy hasn't changed much since Danson's day: solid glassfibre below the waterline, intended to survive a grounding or impact, with carbon and foam sandwich construction used selectively above it. The yard builds its composite parts by vacuum infusion, laying pre-cut GRP mats and adjusting PVC foam core to form the sandwich. Interior furniture follows the same logic: foam-cored composite panels in place of solid wood or plywood, to save weight. Testing a 2014-era 45, SAIL Magazine found Outremer using carbon in high-load areas "to ensure rigidity and durability over time." Production runs primarily through La Grande-Motte, with a second facility at Lorient's "La Base," on the Atlantic coast, set up to build the 45 exclusively.
Lines and generations
The Outremer nameplate has been reused enough over four decades that the same model number can mean two different boats. The 45 is the clearest case: a Danson-designed 45 ran from 2000 into 2014 — one example had logged 40,000 miles by the time of a later Multihulls World review — before Darnet Design's own page describes a Barreau-Neuman-designed 45 replacing "the mythical" original in 2014, then growing hulls and shedding weight through further updates. The 4X, born in 2016, took those newer 45 hulls, stretched and lightened them further, and added carbon spars. On the cruising side, the Outremer 49, launched in 2009, grew into the 51 after a 2013 owner survey called for longer hulls; the 51 went on to win European Yacht of the Year twice and Boat of the Year in the United States. The 52 that followed combined the 51's proven platform with the look of a newer 55, itself a VPLP design Yachting World called "boldly different" from Outremer's past models while keeping "the same" underlying philosophy — sitting alongside an earlier 50/55 built from 1991 to 2007 and the VPLP-designed 5X flagship.
Who Outremer is for
Outremer suits sailors who want a catamaran that still sails like one: daggerboards for genuine upwind performance and a design lineage aimed at fast passages rather than maximum cabin volume. Owners have taken that brief seriously — an Outremer 4X finished the 2018 Route du Rhum as the first production boat home, and the Héliès family completed a round-the-world voyage aboard their Outremer 51, Moby. It's a brand for buyers willing to manage weight and rig discipline for a catamaran that sails, rather than just floats, well; on the last Friday of every month, the yard opens its doors so prospective buyers can watch that discipline built in.
