The wild catamarans of Gdańsk

When French yacht builder Francis Lapp presented his first catamaran at the Monaco Yacht Show two decades ago, it went unnoticed.  

Catamarans were already popular at the time, because they are stable and have a low draft that allows sailing in shallow waters; but their pricing and design were squarely aimed at middle-class buyers. The world’s richest sailing aficionados avoided a category of boats that came conspicuously without the luxury finishings they were seeking. 

Lapp, an electrician by training, wanted to convince the wealthy that his catamaran, built with a flybridge and a luxurious interior design, was an attractive alternative to the monohull. But he had another hurdle to surmount: he had located his catamaran company, Sunreef Yachts, in the same Lenin shipyard of Gdańsk where another electrician, Lech Wałęsa, previously worked and started the Solidarity opposition movement that helped topple Poland’s communist regime. Despite his best efforts, Monaco’s glitzy visitors viewed Sunreef as nothing more than a newcomer from a post-communist country that was yet to join the EU.

“Back in 2000, Poland really wasn’t known for luxury and so people decided not to waste their time visiting a boat that also wasn’t going to be beautiful inside,” Lapp recalls. “Almost nobody visited us during that Monaco boat show, only a few people who weren’t allowed to go on board some of the other boats.” Today, buyers are queueing for his catamarans, so much so that Sunreef’s order book is full for the coming two years. 

Lapp now runs a new yard in Gdańsk, a short drive from the Lenin shipyard where he built his first catamaran. Near the entrance there is a gallery of black-and-white photos of smiling VIPs, from French politicians to Formula One champions. On the top floor of the main building, engineers and architects sit at computer screens, sometimes making last-minute adjustments to the catamarans that are under construction. I tour hangars and docks in which boats are gradually reaching more advanced stages of production, with some already in the water awaiting the final touches to their interior design. 

Lapp’s clients want to join a list of celebrity Sunreef owners that includes Spanish sports stars Rafael Nadal and Fernando Alonso, as well as singer Julio Iglesias. Paris Hilton and Kylie Minogue are among those who have chartered a Sunreef catamaran. In March, Sunreef inaugurated a second manufacturing site outside Dubai, where it plans to build more solar-powered boats in response to the rising demands from the Middle East, Asia and Australia.

Luxury is not to sail from St Tropez to Monaco but to go to a place where there is nobody

The pandemic proved a boost for Sunreef and its competitors, as more people sought a safe haven from Covid-19 on board a comfortable yacht. But even after lockdowns ended, Lapp points to a more enduring change in how boat owners approach travel, as they spend more time on their yachts and search for more remote locations. Sunreef had €200mn in revenues last year. 

“I see that people travel a lot more and keep their boats moving more,” says Lapp. Until recently, “the big question from our clients was always ‘how will I find a mooring spot?’ But now almost nobody is asking us about this.” For many of his customers, he added, “luxury is not to sail from St Tropez to Monaco but to go to a place where there is nobody”. 

Sailing is also becoming more of a family activity, again to the benefit of catamarans. “Before, there were guys who would set off to sail together on a monohull and leave their wives and kids at home and come back a week later,” says Lapp. “I think people now spend a lot more of their free time with their families.” The catamaran, generally more stable and spacious than a monohull yacht, is an ideal platform. 

Superyachts are getting bigger, built for owners who expect to have on board the same kind of entertainment and level of comfort that they can enjoy in their homes, from cigar lounges to jacuzzis. Sunreef built its first superyacht in 2010, a 102ft catamaran for the director of Institut Le Rosey, the elite Swiss private school. Lapp is now working on a catamaran that will measure 140ft. His first 74ft catamaran was considered big in 2003, but “with 80ft you’re now average”, he notes. 

Sunreef employs 2,300 workers in Gdańsk, and almost 300 in the Ras Al Khaimah shipyard where Lapp expects to more than double the workforce next year. Only about five per cent of the Dubai order book is so far filled by Middle Eastern customers, which leaves Lapp feeling that he faces a similar challenge to that in Monaco two decades ago. “Why do locals in the Middle East not buy a catamaran? Because they don’t yet see it as luxury,” he says. “But I think those who come and see my catamarans are surprised.” The starting price for a Sunreef catamaran is now €1.5mn, but its most advanced yachts cost around €50mn.

Lapp, 66, left his native Alsace for Poland in 1992 to open an electrical equipment business just as French retailers were starting to build their first stores in central and eastern Europe. One of his early customers, the country director of Castorama, introduced him to the joys of sailing on a Polish lake, after which Lapp bought himself a 46ft catamaran and also started a side business chartering them. He claims that sailing remains a hobby rather than an obsession and that his main motivation has always been to design boats rather than cross oceans.

“What I like is to build, but I’m from [landlocked] Alsace, not from Normandy or from the Côte d’Azur,” says Lapp. “When I started to build my first catamaran, I had never visited a shipyard.”

Before turning to sailing Lapp was a fan of rally-car racing who also built his own cars. He wants regulators to put more pressure on the boat sector to raise environmental standards, just as the car industry embraced electric vehicles because of stricter rules on emissions. Sunreef uses recycled wood and fabrics for its interior design, and plans to introduce flax fibre composites for items ranging from jacuzzis to navigation tables. 

There are now big yards building catamarans, but it took them 20 years to understand they needed to change

But, marking a return to his professional roots as an electrician, Lapp also welcomes the fact that half of Sunreef’s order book is now for hybrid-powered or electric catamarans. The company has patents pending for solar panels integrated into almost every part of its catamarans, from the flybridge to the hull sides.

Lapp has brought his wife, a son, and a stepson into Sunreef’s management, but he clearly remains the skipper of his family business. For the first time this past summer he took a four-week holiday, but otherwise, he says, “I’m involved in everything, from boat design to aftersales. I want to know exactly what is happening.”

“By keeping everything in-house, we can be very reactive and respond almost immediately to new demands from our clients, for a pink jacuzzi or whatever they might want,” says Artur Poloczanski, Sunreef’s public relations director. “Everything stays under one roof here, which is not the case for most other yacht manufacturers.”

When Lapp arrived in Poland in 1992, the country was embarking on a transition from communism to a free-market economy that almost collapsed state industries like shipbuilding, leaving many of Gdańsk’s shipyard workers searching for new jobs. But Poland has been one of the continent’s fastest growing economies since joining the EU in 2004, and now one of Sunreef’s main problems in Gdańsk is a shortage of workers. “If you create 2,000 jobs in Poland, nobody congratulates you,” he says. 

Many of Sunreef’s workers are now refugees from Ukraine, like Alina, who fled her destroyed city of Bakhmut where she had worked in a sweets factory. “I thought that I might be here for two or three months and I would go home, but of course it’s good to have found this work,” she says, while fitting a joint on a window frame.

Lapp sees himself as a pioneer in a growing market in which monohull competitors are also adding luxury catamarans to their offering. “If you look at the charter business now – and I was last week in the Seychelles – there are fewer and fewer monohulls left,” Lapp says. “There are now big yards building catamarans, but it took them 20 years to understand they needed to change.”

About four years ago Lapp received a takeover offer for Sunreef that seemed timely, since he was reaching retirement age. “I had the buyer, we were going through the sale process, but a few weeks before I was set to sign, I pulled out and said sorry,” Lapp recalled. “I’m now very happy about this: all my friends have retired but I’m enjoying life every day by going to work.”