Tofinou

Latitude 46 builds Tofinous near La Rochelle, and has done since 1987 — a yard of about fifty people launching some twenty boats a year, named for the parallel it sits on. The brand name is older and stranger: the Tofinu are the "people of the water" from Lake Nokoué in Benin, and the first Tofinou was a wooden dayboat drawn in 1928, whose hull Bertrand Danglade found on a mudflat of the Île de Ré in 1986 and replicated in polyester. That single mould produced 230 boats and a marque.

The line was long drawn by Joubert-Nivelt, one of France's most prolific design offices; after Michel Joubert's death in 2016 it passed to Michele Molino, who drew the current 9.7 together with Peugeot's car designers. Tofinous are luxury daysailers: varnished mahogany over modern sandwich hulls, raced as a class at Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez and kept by owners who know each other by boat name.