With boats, does beauty matter?

A seagoing boat is not a toy. It is the most serious of vehicles, built to let humans brave an unpredictable, lethally dangerous element with efficient control and reasonable dispatch. Boat design and boatbuilding are therefore solemn endeavours, demanding utter trust from vulnerable human customers who will face peril miles away from help. Materials, rig and balance in design can make the difference between life and death.

- LIBBY PURVES

With all that seriousness, does a boat's prettiness matter? Do you, should you, mind whether your boat is good to look at, not a frump but a smokin' hot babe or a timelessly elegant dowager?

You will, after all, be mainly on board when she is afloat, so it's other people's view you are enhancing or spoiling. Does beauty matter? Some will immediately cry that in their experience a good boat is a pretty boat, because elegant proportions mean sea-kindly behaviour and a pleasant ride. Certainly, it is true that some traditional shapes - sharp bow, long keel, elegant stern, quite low freeboard - have a timeless beauty and work well at sea. Our old Rummer yawl was so drop-dead gorgeous that she enhanced any anchorage, and sailing on some of the more elegant tall ships, I have seen other vessels alter course just to get pictures. Quite annoying when you're hard on the wind and think they're going to ram you.