Fresh Approach

"A refreshing new brand building fast and spacious cats out of volcanic rock and plastic bottles? Toby Hodges was intrigued"

- By Toby Hodges

This French start-up venture might just have paved a new way forward in production yacht building. Windelo is the brainchild of the Kauffmanns, a father and son team who wanted to create something altogether different from the norm and to build boats that have half the environmental impact of standard glass fibre yachts. The result is an intriguing package – from the clean styling, modular interior and novel layout to the electric propulsion – the Windelo 50 is completely fresh.

Having followed this project for the last three years, I was aware of the R&D the new yard had put into materials and its strive for a greener product. What I wasn’t quite expecting is the sailing rewards. The forward cockpit design combined with the yacht’s performance could surprise many...

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME

In an era where the big yards should be leading by example rather than greenwashing, few go to the extent that newcomers Windelo has. Olivier Kauffmann (ex-CEO of Orange Marine) and his son Gautier spent two years researching environmentally-friendly composite materials with Ecole Nationale des Mines d’Alès before establishing a shipyard for their new range of catamarans in Canet-en-Roussillon in 2019.