Grand Soleil

Cantiere del Pardo has built Grand Soleils in Forlì since 1973, a yard founded on three million lire "lent" by Raul Gardini to Giuseppe Giuliani, and on a formula fixed by its very first boat: a racing hull with cruising accommodation. Through the eighties the yard answered Italy's longing for Nordic pedigree with Alain Jézéquel's designs, boats so convincingly drawn that abroad they earned the nickname "Spaghetti Swan." More than five thousand hulls later, after a corporate saga running from private-equity funds to the Calzedonia group, the brand endures — and so does its golden-era fleet.

Since 2022 the yard has run the Grand Soleil Vintage Cup, a regatta open only to boats designed before 2000: the rare case of a builder actively curating the used market for its own forty-year-old hulls. For a buyer, that community is half the value of the boat.