Quality (always) sells
Twenty-six large luxury yachts is a fine enough launch tally... but designer Philippe Briand’s CNB 76-footers are still rolling out the shipyard
How do you improve a yacht that’s been a runaway success and is well on its way to becoming a modern classic? At CNB Yacht Builders, the luxury arm of Group Beneteau, the favoured approach is to keep on building their flagship CNB 76 while introducing some carefully developed refinements. ‘After six years of production we still can’t see an end of life for this boat,’ says Christophe Harvey, product manager and design engineer at CNB. ‘We have sold 26 of them, there is still very high demand and the boat is becoming iconic.’ A Mk2 version is now in production but there are no changes at all to the yacht’s hull, keel, rudders, deck or superstructure – Philippe Briand’s elegant and diligently researched design has stood the test of time. ‘The most obvious difference is that we’ve integrated a bowsprit into the hull as we’ve done previously on the CNB 66,’ Harvey says. ‘This makes the yacht even more elegant and allows you to put the tack of your downwind sails 1.8m further forward.’ Briand is overseeing the refinement process. ‘We want to make sure that he keeps overall control of the design,’ Harvey says. ‘It’s a close collaboration: we listen
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to our designers’ guidelines and then the engineers in our design office make it happen.’
Another new feature is CNB’s low- energy air conditioning system, which is unique in the market at the time of writing. It can run overnight in all four cabins off the battery inverter without needing to start the generator. With a standard-size battery bank, you get a whole night of silence undisturbed by the drone of a generator. This system was first trialled and proven on the CNB 66 and has now been deployed on the CNB 76 too.
A further modification is an upgrade of the yacht’s mainsail winch. ‘The Harken ST70 was perfectly adequate for the loads,’ Harvey says, ‘but we felt that upgrading to an ST80 could lower the sheet trimmer’s stress levels in some situations and provide a bit more comfort.’
The CNB 76 is designed first and foremost to be a cruising boat. It’s a proper deck saloon yacht with a cockpit designed for lounging and the companionway offset to starboard. ‘But a very important aspect of the design is that on the day when you want to race, the boat is competitive and lots of fun to sail,’ Harvey explains. ‘Most large yachts are
Above:
it’s a rather handsome yacht and Philippe Briand’s diligent market
research has paid off. After six years of production, demand for the CNB 76 remains remarkably high for both new builds and charters. With 26 of these yachts sold and more in the pipeline, the CNB 76 looks set to be the largest class competing at the upcoming Rolex Maxi World Cup
designed to look like racers, with a classic setup – symmetrical deck layout, flush deck or very low-profile cabin top and so on. When you try to cruise those boats, you soon realise it’s not ideal. We approached this problem the other way round, designing a cruising boat that is a lot of fun when you want to race.’ It must be said that the CNB 76 is remarkably fast in light airs: six to eight knots is enough breeze to turn the engine off and you can easily make seven knots upwind in those conditions. Despite the two rudders and twin wheels the helm is sensitive, provides the right amount of feedback and gives you fingertip control. The steering system is entirely mechanical with Dyneema lines providing the linkage between the rudders and wheels. ‘We definitely didn’t want to use hydraulics, which would have deadened the helm,’ Harvey says. Will the bowsprit give the new Mk2 version a performance advantage downwind? That remains to be seen. It does allow greater separation from the mainsail and potentially allows owners to fly a larger spinnaker but it will be interesting to see whether anyone
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