Solaris sailboats: one construction standard, two changes of ownership
Solaris was born in Aquileia, on the Natissa River near the lagoons of Venice, in 1974 — not under that name but as Se.Ri.Gi. What has stayed constant since is less the name over the door than what happens on the shop floor: composite bulkheads and chainplates bonded directly into the hull and deck, a discipline the yard developed under industrial pressure and has kept through two changes of ownership and four generations of outside naval architects, from Sparkman & Stephens to Javier Soto Acebal.
Origins and ownership
The yard's early work was staging operations for other builders' designs and production, including hulls for the Benello shipyard, rather than boats of its own. Growth followed steadily: by 1985 the site covered 7,000 square meters, more than 2,000 of them indoors, capable of handling boats up to 25 meters; by 2002 it had expanded again to roughly 26,000 square meters, including 6,000 under cover.
Ownership changed twice, each time reshaping more than the letterhead. In 2010, a consortium led by G. Giuliani took over and the yard became Solaris Yachts in fact as well as name. Solaris entered the motor-yacht segment in 2018 with a separate brand, Solaris Power. In 2021, Giuliani — who had also founded Grand Soleil in 1974 and is remembered as one of the fathers of post-war Italian yachting — sold his majority stake to Marc Giorgetti, of Luxembourg, whose family group dates to the late 1800s and specializes in construction. The same year, with Giuliani's departure, Solaris took over the CNB brand of blue-water sailing yachts from 60 feet upward from Beneteau. The result was a group spanning four brands — Solaris, Solaris Power, Performance Boats, and CNB — all in the luxury and premium segment, with Solaris itself still building performance sailing yachts such as the 64 RS.
The designers
External naval architects, not an in-house department, have driven most of Solaris's sailing range. Sparkman & Stephens co-founder Rod Stephens observed the deck design for the two-tonner "Rupe" — the 1979 Solaris 47 — putting S&S among the earliest names in that lineage. Doug Peterson followed: the Solaris One launched in 1984, the 64-foot Solaris Zero in 1986, the 48cc Solaris Two in 1991, and, in 2000, the yard's first deck-house model, the Solaris 72. Bill Tripp took over as designer in 2006, creating the Solaris One 48. Seahorse's account of the roster also names the late Franz Maas alongside them.
The current era began in 2012, when the Solaris 58 marked the start of Javier Soto Acebal's partnership with the yard — a relationship the Argentinian naval architect has said came through a recommendation from Wally Yachts founder Luca Bassani, followed by a trip to Aquileia to meet the yard's heads and discuss a new Solaris 44 before he was confirmed. Soto Acebal has said yards like Wally and Solaris "improve the architect's design" rather than diminish it. His Solaris 50, launched in 2017, was singled out for lines ahead of its time; a second-generation 50 followed in 2022, still under his design. Not every later model is his alone: Seahorse reported the newer Solaris 55 was developed in-house, with Soto Acebal contributing naval architecture, and the Solaris 74 RS, its first hull scheduled for late 2023, credits both Soto Acebal and Lorenzo Argento.
Construction through the eras
The yard's construction identity traces to the 1990s, when a recession-era production run with Fincantieri in Monfalcone gave Solaris its footing in composite materials — know-how it put into the Solaris 62, built that decade in advanced composite using glass fabrics, Kevlar, carbon, and epoxy resins. What grew out of that period is less about materials than bonding: structural bulkheads are composite rather than wood, run a minimum of 40mm thick, and are fully laminated to both hull and deck rather than merely fitted; chainplates are composite too, 28 vacuum-bonded layers of uni- and bidirectional fibres rather than steel, partly, Seahorse reported, to avoid mixing materials with different mechanical properties in one structure. Floors are laminated and cured before being bonded into the hull, intersections reinforced with unidirectional fibres, and keels carry a stainless AISI 316 flange plate at least 30mm thick, bolted to the hull's backing plate with at least twelve stainless bolts of at least 30mm.
Reviewers who have gone aboard individual models describe the same bonding logic in practice: Sail found the Solaris 50's bulkheads laminated to hull and deck over a vacuum-infused, Airex-cored polyester laminate; Yachting World found a comparable vinylester sandwich on the 40, its bulkheads fully bonded in and its structure stiff with no undue creaking upwind in a confused sea; Sailing magazine and TradeABoat described similarly vacuum-built, Airex-cored construction on the 44 and the Solaris ONE 42. By 2018, that approach had made the yard, in Seahorse's words, one of the biggest composite production facilities in Europe, having by then built more than 200 yachts between 37 and 68 feet plus several carbon luxury yachts of 80 to 120 feet.
Lines and generations
Three lines now run through the sailing range. The "One" name dates to 2006, when Bill Tripp's Solaris One 48 established it; later boats, including the Solaris ONE 42, carried the name forward. A second line grew out of the 68 RS, conceived as flagship of the One Line before the yard repositioned it as the first model in what became the Raised Saloon, or RS, series — a lineage that continues with the 64 RS and the 74 RS. A third, the Classic line, took a different approach: the 72 Classic, built between 2013 and 2022, paired a Soto Acebal exterior with an interior from Solaris's own design team as a semi-custom yacht developed with its owner, carrying a carbon mast for weight distribution.
Who Solaris is for
Solaris builds fast cruisers from 40 to 80 feet, and its history points toward buyers who want that combination: performance-oriented hulls from a lineage of named naval architects, built to a bonded-composite standard developed under industrial pressure rather than marketing copy. Buyers who want a size-appropriate production boat can look to the One and Raised Saloon lines; those who want something further from a catalog can look to the Classic line's semi-custom builds or the yard's separate refit and restoration work on yachts up to 100 feet. Either way, the boat comes from a builder positioned, alongside Solaris Power and CNB, in the group's luxury and premium segment rather than at the volume end of the market.
