Jean-François de Prémorel, a mainstay of the Jeanneau boatyard and a major figure in French sailing, passed away on 14 July 2020 at the age of 64. His meeting with Marc Van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot-Prévost was a decisive event for VPLP. The firm’s founders pay their respects.

“We all started out in the boat business at the same time, in 1983, him a boatbuilder and us, naval architects. We learnt and problem-solved together, and we innovated together too. Gérard Lambert for Vincent Lévy, the first ocean-going ORMA trimarans for Florence Arthaud and Laurent Bourgnon, and then the Lagoon series since 1980s were all the fruit of our bond and understanding, both as friends and professionals.

He was a man of vision, passionate, rigorous, sensitive and humane, who knew how to be firm and persuasive in the defence of his convictions. Some of his outbursts were worthy of John McEnroe and are forever engraved in our memories. He was one of the most important factors in the development of the VPLP brand and we never lost sight of each other over the decades, on the pontoons, in the boat shows and around the Morbihan.”