Privilège sailboats: a round-the-world racer's yard that outlived four owners
Philippe Jeantot had already won two round-the-world races before he built his first catamaran. The future Vendée Globe founder started Jeantot Marine in Les Sables-d'Olonne in 1985, and the brand that grew out of it — Privilège — still centers its current flagships on an idea that traces back to that yard: a forward central rostrum that Darnet Design, its longtime styling partner, calls the DNA behind Privilège's reputation, housing what the designers describe as the largest owner's suite in its class. Getting from Jeantot's first Paris boat show to that current lineup took the company through four different owners and at least one full liquidation. Each one kept building from the same stretch of France's Atlantic coast where Jeantot started it.
Origins and ownership
Jeantot, born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, in 1952, founded Jeantot Marine with René Bernard in 1985 and presented his first catamaran to the public in Paris; the design went on to win America's Boat of the Year award in 1995 and 1996, and early models carrying the Privilège name included the 47. Privilège Marine's own company history discloses that Jeantot later faced legal troubles in France, including convictions connected with financial and tax matters.
The company, by then renamed Alliaura Marine, was liquidated on 27 March 2012, and its assets went to auction in Lanester that June. Gilles Wagner, an industrialist whose earlier career had been at Altor Industrie, a Clisson maker of prefabricated shower cabins and bathrooms, won the auction with a group of private investors, acquiring the molds and the Privilège and Feeling brands. One boat wasn't part of the sale: the first hull of the Privilège 1000, a 30-metre maxi catamaran and the largest the yard had ever built, stayed behind in Lanester, its Marc Lombard-designed future uncertain. Wagner moved the rest of production back to Les Sables d'Olonne — where the company had started before an earlier move to Lanester — and rebuilt it fast: the workforce grew from 18 employees in 2012 to 102 by 2015, revenue reached roughly 9 million euros over eighteen months to 2014, and the yard was producing around 15 boats a year, 80 percent of them exported.
Hanse Yachts took a stake in Privilège in 2018 and completed the takeover with its August 2019 purchase of the remaining shares. Wagner returned as CEO in October 2022, buying the yard back with a consortium that included Privilège's own customers at what Giornale della Vela called a symbolic price. Less than two years later, the Czech-Dutch fund PPF — already the owner of South African builder Robertson & Caine and its Leopard Catamarans brand — bought Privilège Marine and installed Gildas Le Masson, formerly of Nautitech, to lead it.
The designers
Marc Lombard has been Privilège's naval architect across most of its documented range, credited on the late-1990s 465, the 585, the 615, the 445, and the current Signature 510 and 580. Darnet Design came in later: the two companies describe themselves as longstanding partners, and Privilège turned to Darnet again for the Signature series' styling, including the 580's exterior. Between them, Lombard's hulls and Darnet's design work have carried through every ownership change the yard has been through.
Construction through the eras
The earliest boats were semicustom work: reviewers of the late-1980s 39 pointed to hand-cut wooden bulkheads and furniture facings in place of molded liners, calling the joinery and fibreglass sculpting excellent. Alliaura Marine — the name the yard carried before its 2012 collapse — built the 465, still prepared at what reviewers called the Jeantot Marine shipyard, and the 585, of which only 24 were built between 2002 and 2006; CatamaranReviews.com credited the 585 with a respected reputation for quality of construction, finishing, and use. The Signature line, introduced under Hanse ownership, centers on the central rostrum Darnet Design calls the DNA behind the yard's success — a pod housing the largest owner's suite in its class — paired with semi-custom design options and, on the 510, 30 percent more glazed area than its Série 5 predecessor.
Lines and generations
Privilège Marine's 2012 relaunch carried two brands forward: Privilège catamarans and Feeling, a line of 32-to-55-foot monohulls. The Wagner-era catamarans used the Série designation, including the Série 5 (23 hulls built), the export-focused Série 6 — a 19.5-metre design for German-speaking Europe, America, and Australia that can carry up to 12 charter guests — and the 23-metre Série 7, presented in 2016 and rated for up to 14 people including crew. Hanse ownership introduced the Signature name: the 510, built on the Série 5's tested hull, and the 580, which Multihulls World called the first Privilège catamaran designed entirely from scratch since the yard joined Hanse. A 650 followed in 2022.
Who Privilège is for
Privilège suits buyers drawn to a French-built, semi-custom luxury catamaran with a documented design lineage — Marc Lombard's naval architecture, Darnet Design's styling, and, on current models, the central owner's-suite rostrum — rather than a boat defined by whichever company happens to be in charge. That lineage, and the Les Sables-d'Olonne yard itself, is the constant across four ownership changes since 2012; the corporate name on the door has mattered far less than the design partners and the place.
