Dufour Sailboats for Sale

Dufour

From the first successful model, the Arpège, to the present day, Dufour has stood for innovative and reliable "Made in France" quality.

From the “Arpège” to the “Grand Large”

More than 50 yacht models have left the shipyard halls in La Rochelle since the 1960s. Like hardly any other yard, Dufour stands for consistently pursued, innovative work on the model.
As early as 1957, the young engineer Michel Dufour was working on boat designs and looking for suitable alternatives to classic hull materials such as wood or steel. With his first production sailboat, the “Sylph”, whose hull was made of polyester composites, he clearly struck a chord. He immediately received 20 building orders, and 60 the following year.

A rapidly expanding sales network

Shortly afterwards, Dufour launched the legendary “Arpège”: an affordable cabin cruiser – the first to be built industrially – that also offered great sailing performance and impressed with its clean workmanship. It was aboard this boat, incidentally, that Gudrun Calligaro became the first German woman to sail solo around the world.
With the subsequent “Sortilege”, Dufour enjoyed another upswing. By then there were already many sales bases in France, and strong demand led to the sales network being extended across Europe.
In the 1980s, the yard’s management focused on moving into the premium segment. Models such as the “Lacoste” were built in limited series (a dozen boats) and remain sought-after used yachts to this day. Nomen est omen: the “Prestige” range finally established Dufour in the luxury and comfort segment as well. In the 1990s, Dufour shone as one of the first European production yards to bring genuinely sail-ready and fully equipped yachts to market.

New design with Umberto Felci

In the 2000s, the collaboration with the renowned Italian designer Umberto Felci began. This extremely successful partnership produced above all the – conceptually separate – Grand Large (offshore cruising yachts) and Performance (racing) lines. Since 2018, Dufour has also been building cruising catamarans.
Dufour advertises that it builds “purely French boats”: every design and construction stage is carried out in France.