McGruer - Why Art Matters in Yacht Design

This 3000 word symposium paper was presented at the first ever classic yacht design symposium to be held in the UK, "Clyde Classic", at the Royal Northern and Clyde Yacht Club in June 2013. The paper deals with issues of aesthetics in classic yacht design, particularly in the current revival of interest in classic yachts world-wide and rehearses a number of issues that bear upon the appreciation of the visual and perfomative characteristics of sailing yachts. In approaching the application of aesthetics to yacht design the paper presents three points originally put forward in the 1950’s firstly that a reasonable length of overhang and a concave sheerline are innately graceful; secondly that ideas of beauty in classic yacht design at that time had become “accepted” by “the main body of yachting opinion; and thirdly that ideas of beauty in yacht design have absolute aesthetic values. The paper goes on to note that in contrast today there is a need for a broader education of the yachting public by exemplars, good practice and equally importantly in written texts in the connoisseurship of the art in yacht design generally.