Allures

Allures builds aluminum centreboarders in Cherbourg, and has done since 2003 — founded by two engineers, Stéphan Constance and Xavier Desmarest, with a stated mission to revitalise the aluminium centreboarder. Their heresy against the all-metal dogma: welded aluminum below the waterline, where the reefs and the logs are, and a foam-cored composite deck above, where the eyes and the fastener holes are. Twenty years on, no documented leak of that joint has surfaced — and the argument about it still runs.

The yard anchors Grand Large Yachting, the group that also builds Garcia, Outremer, Gunboat and RM — roughly €130 million in revenue, a thousand employees, Allures and Garcia hulls welded side by side in batches of three. Within the group's geography of latitudes, Garcia takes the ice and Allures takes the tradewinds: the boats for sailing around the world in warm water, drying out in lagoons on the way.