Jeanneau

Henri Jeanneau built his first boat in 1957 in a Les Herbiers garage — a plywood runabout, made because he wanted one and could not buy one. He won the Paris six-hour powerboat race with it the following year, and the orders followed. Polyester arrived in 1958, and within a decade Jeanneau was producing motorboats and sailing yachts in parallel, a duality almost no European yard has sustained.

That double culture still defines the house. The Sun Odyssey range covers cruising monohulls from 30 to 50 feet; Merry Fisher and Cap Camarat cover the fishing-and-family powerboat market that France buys in volume; the NC and DB lines push upmarket. Jeanneau joined Groupe Beneteau in 1995 and kept its own design office and its own identity — where Beneteau optimises for volume and light, Jeanneau tends to be judged the better-mannered boat at sea, a distinction the two ranges maintain deliberately.