Hi Nick,
1rst of all, apologies about the late reply, but just discover your post about Le Guen & Hémidy brand.
This use to be a famous shipyard in the Normandy area, in
France, actually the Cotentin area, in Carentan city.
The shipyard does not exists anymore (since end of the 90'), which is kind of sad as they produced very renowned sailboats at their time, more famous than Alubat ovnis during the period to give you an idea.
They had a pretty good reputation in term of quality and performance, higher than their french competitors in the same range of
price.
They produce
small boat as Pend Duick 600 (6 meters, made from a
single folded aluminium plate, interesting try in term of manufacturing, but not convincing in term of performance...), up to 70'+ ones.
Their most famous range in the 80' were the "brise de mer" that had (to be confirmed) 4 sizes (32, 34 or 36 and 38), topped by the brise de mer 44, a
center cockpit sloop or
cutter rig, with a very nice aft
cabin. These
boat are very
seaworthy and reliable structurally speaking, they are excellent for cruising, not as up to fashion than nowadays boat, but still performing well for cruisers and can be easily blue waters sailing boat.
The decade after they produced the "Lévrier de mer" range starting with a 12 m and ending with 22 m, with 14, 16 & 18 m inbetween. All were J.M. Finot design, inspired by the new (at that time) 60' open
monohull class in term of waterlines and with a weight close to ULDB specification (our 53' is reputed to be 8 tons empty...), very fast,
seaworthy, reliable, still well reputed.
Le Guen & Hémidy also produced custom boats, and when the shipyard closed, most of the team spreaded in other famous shipyard either in Britanny or Normandy, some guys from the management team went (or created ?) to JFA, in Concarneau, that became famous as well in
France, others are still in Normandy, working at the "Allures" shipyard, in Cherbourg, where Azawakh is laying, one of them recognised the boat and asked to visit it to assess the aging and share the feedback after 2 decades of its manufacturing. The guy was pride of the
work they made, and we could felt some memories coming up while we were exchanging on the former shipyard.
Today, there is no equivalent in aluminium boatbuilding in France, although they are several shipyards, mainly in term of products, as they are mostly orientated on long range cruising boat and centerboards ones, rather than fast sailing / racing-cruising boat, but if you say "Le Guen & Hémidy" to a sailor in France aged over 40, he'll acknowledge immediately with some admiration.
the range of "Lévrier de mer" was continued by Alubat (Ovnis) up to few years ago, but on custom order only, and I am not sure if any were built actually, on the opposite of the variation with centercockpit ("Cigale") that was on offer and that was recently redesign and still is on offer by Alubat.
Hope this will help you a bit on this shipyard.