Wauquiez itself is a shipyard with roots in a particularly romantic kind of entrepreneurship. Henri Wauquiez founded the yard after spending a summer cruising the French Riviera in a Kim Holman-designed Elizabethan 29 and receiving seven orders from admiring sailors before the summer was out. That origin — passion transmuted into commerce, English-designed DNA grafted onto French manufacturing — set the tone for everything that followed. The yard's early collaborations with Holman & Pye produced a succession of fast, capable cruisers culminating in the Centurion family spanning 36 to 61 feet, and those boats established the brand's reputation among sailors who expected both performance and durability from a serious yacht.
Hull and Deck Architecture
The Pilot Saloon 60's defining gesture is its raised deck saloon — a structure that might look, in lesser hands, like an awkward compromise grafted onto a conventional hull. On the Ed Dubois design, it reads as inevitable. The raised roof integrates seamlessly into the deck plan, and the volumes it creates below are extraordinary for a monohull of any era. Light pours in from angles that conventional sloop interiors simply cannot achieve, and the saloon height transforms the experience of living aboard from something to be endured on passage to something genuinely comfortable during extended passages or long anchorages.
Dubois was among the most accomplished offshore designers working when this hull was drawn, and his involvement guaranteed that the aesthetic ambitions of the deck saloon concept would be grounded in a form with genuine offshore capability. The hull is built to standards that reflect Wauquiez's consistent emphasis on overbuilding: hulls are constructed in vinylester infusion with balsa sandwich, a combination that addresses both osmotic resistance and stiffness while keeping weight in check relative to structure.
Construction Quality and Craftsmanship
The Wauquiez approach to building is not the approach of a volume yard. Production runs to roughly a dozen units per year, and each boat spends approximately a year on the floor before delivery — longer for more complex models. This is a production pace that permits a level of attention to individual boats that larger shipyards cannot sustain.
What that attention looks like in practice is articulated clearly by the yard's own operational philosophy. Fittings and woodwork are machined from solid timber rather than veneered sheet goods, and the yard's stated policy is to oversize structural elements wherever possible. This is not mere marketing language — it reflects a genuine commitment to longevity that has defined Wauquiez's position among demanding owners who expect a boat to outlast several ownerships without fundamental structural compromise.
Accommodation and Interior Living
The interior of the Pilot Saloon 60 is the direct beneficiary of the deck-saloon architecture above it. The raised coachroof section creates headroom and volume in the saloon that bears no resemblance to what conventional offshore boats of comparable length could achieve in the same period. The concept was compelling enough that, following the Pilot Saloon's launch, several other shipyards adopted the deck-saloon approach as a direct response to customer demand — particularly from sailors who had been attracted to catamarans by their space and light but who were unwilling to accept the sailing characteristics of a multihull.
The Pilot Saloon concept proved so enduring that it became the dominant offering in the Wauquiez range and remains the yard's most requested line. That kind of longevity in a customer base as opinionated as serious offshore cruisers is a meaningful endorsement.
Offshore Pedigree and Brand DNA
Wauquiez has never built boats for the casual weekend market. From the Centurion 32 onward, the yard has positioned itself in the space occupied by owners who cruise seriously and live aboard for extended periods. The company's geographic location — based in Neuville-en-Ferrain near Lille, the only major sailing shipyard in northern France — has made it a natural supplier to Nordic markets where construction standards and offshore capability are scrutinized with particular rigor. That clientele has reinforced the yard's instinct to build conservatively and finish beautifully.
The yard operates within the Experton-Revollier group, which holds stakes in Rhea Marine and Latitude 46, enabling material and manufacturing synergies that support quality control across production. For buyers of a Pilot Saloon 60, this group structure represents a kind of institutional backing that standalone boutique yards cannot offer.
The Verdict
The Wauquiez Pilot Saloon 60 is a rare boat: genuinely large enough to live aboard in comfort, seriously built enough for offshore passages, and architecturally distinctive enough that its interior spaces remain remarkable even by contemporary standards. It was ahead of its time in recognizing that monohull sailors deserved the same quality of light and volume that catamarans offered, and the Ed Dubois hull underneath the concept gave it the sailing pedigree to make that argument credibly. For the buyer who wants an offshore cruiser that does not require excuses, this boat makes very few concessions.
Pros
- Raised deck-saloon delivers exceptional light and interior volume rarely found in monohulls of any era
- Ed Dubois hull design provides genuine offshore capability beneath the cruising-comfort architecture
- Vinylester infusion with balsa sandwich construction addresses long-term osmotic and structural concerns
- Solid wood joinery and oversized fittings reflect a genuine commitment to durability over decades
- Low production volume ensures each boat receives individualized attention during build
- Yard's position in the Nordic export market reinforces the build standard demanded by serious offshore buyers
Cons
- Low annual production volume means the used pool is limited relative to volume-production competitors
- Bespoke construction quality commands a price premium that reflects the yard's artisanal position
- The raised deck saloon, while architecturally elegant, requires careful seamanship in beam-on conditions common during passages
- Limited specification data in circulation makes detailed comparison to comparable offshore designs difficult for prospective buyers
