RM sailboats: a French plywood-epoxy specialist across five decades
RM Yachts has built fast, comfortable monohull sailing yachts in La Rochelle, France, since 1989, when founder Jean-Claude Oudry launched the yard at the tail end of France's leisure boating boom with a nine-metre first model, the RM 900. What has set RM apart across three changes of ownership since then is a construction method rarely used by other production yards: chined hulls built from epoxy-infused okoume marine plywood, refined for decades in partnership with naval architect Marc Lombard's design group. According to General Manager Martin Lepoutre, more than 500 sailboats from 30 to 45 feet have been built at the La Rochelle yard since inception.
Origins and ownership
RM has changed hands three times since Oudry's 1989 founding, each transition reshaping the company more than its boats. Martin Lepoutre's holding company, Groupe Fora, took over the yard in 2002, a shift that transformed RM's image from a blue-water cruiser brand into a more mainstream yacht marque. Under Lepoutre, Fora Marine posted an 8 million euro turnover in 2016 and, at the start of 2017, moved into new premises that doubled its production area — changes made just before Lepoutre sold the company that March. The buyer was SAS Aime Mer, a structure managed by business lawyer Stéphane Sénacq, which officially purchased RM from Groupe Fora in 2017. RM has been owned by Grand Large Yachting since 2020, an acquisition the Bordeaux Commercial Court validated that February; the group, France's fourth-largest yacht builder, was founded in 2003 by Xavier Desmarest and Stéphan Constance and added RM to a stable that already included Allures Yachting, Garcia Yachts, Outremer, and Gunboat. On taking over, RM's new CEO, Luca Tessitore, said the shipyard's short-term priority was to contact customers who had placed orders and restart production; Grand Large Yachting president Stéphan Constance later pointed to the RM 1180 winning the 2020 Sailboat of the Year award as proof of RM's culture of innovation.
The designers
Marc Lombard, described by RM Yachts as the architect of its yachts, discovered plywood-epoxy construction while training under boatbuilder Walter Green in Yarmouth, Maine, where Green introduced him to the Gougeon brothers' West System — making Lombard one of the first naval architects to bring plywood-epoxy construction to France. In a 2016 interview, Lombard said he had spent the previous 25 years working with RM Yachts to refine the process and make it economically viable. The Marc Lombard Design Group has been RM's design partner of choice since 1995, and Voile Magazine reported in April 2021 that Lombard had designed the RM 800 twenty-five years earlier.
Construction through the eras
RM still builds using the compounded plywood-epoxy technique the Gougeon brothers pioneered: chined hulls of epoxy-infused okoume marine plywood, painted rather than left in gelcoat — RM is one of the only shipyards that paints the hulls of all its boats, a practice its plywood-epoxy construction makes possible. Decks are a GRP foam-sandwich structure, made via infusion moulding by A2J, a La Rochelle neighbor of the RM yard, with a galvanized steel frame laminated into the structure to carry rig and keel loads. Hull ports have featured on every RM model since the RM 1050 launched in 1998, a construction-era marker that still distinguishes older hulls from newer ones.
Lines and generations
The RM 900, a nine-metre design, launched the brand in 1989. RM won the European Yacht of the Year family-cruiser category twice, with the RM 1260 in 2013 and the RM 970 in 2017. The newest model in the lineup, the RM 980, succeeds the RM 970 and was designed with Marc Lombard; according to sales and marketing manager César Dohy, its design process started from the RM 970 hull, by then a decade old.
Who RM is for
RM remains a small operation: about 40 workers, according to Dohy, building 20 to 25 boats a year across five models from 28 to 45 feet. That scale has bred loyalty even as Lepoutre's ownership pushed the brand toward the mainstream: Dohy has said almost 30 percent of RM's customers had owned an RM before. The marque suits sailors drawn to a distinctive, painted-plywood construction method refined over decades by one design house, more than buyers looking for a mass-production yard.
