When it comes to yachts, does beauty really matter? – Libby Purves

'I have seen gorgeous-looking boats on which I would be unwilling to cross a duckpond.' Libby Purves considers the benefits of function over form

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.

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 seakindly 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.

We happen to think that our Victoria 38 with rather original new sea-green topsides looks even more tasty than when she was creamy white, and like to think that her shapely appearance would meet approval from serious sailors in any century.

We also appreciated the retro faux-traditional look of our old Cornish Crabbers Pilot Cutter, Grace o’Malley. So did others: we know this because once, attempting to get shelter from a rising gale, we were dragged in to be an exhibit in the St-Valery-en-Caux traditional-boats fête de la mer, despite our cries of ‘On est plastique!’

Tied up near a real D-day veteran and an oyster smack, we had to put the kids in Breton stripes and hammocks, buy a set of flags from the chandlery to dress overall, and get Paul to attempt a speech of thanks to M. le Maire.

But I am not sure about prettiness. I’ve seen, up the top of rivers, raffishly gorgeous-looking boats (again, very retro) on which, after closer examination, I would be unwilling to cross a duckpond. And face it, some of the most popular, safe and well-liked production boats look like bargain-basement butter dishes (if small) and sawn-off semi-spacecraft or particularly ugly caravans (when large).

Many esteemed boats are fat, high-sided lumbering things to look at, though in use neat, fast and full of meltingly comfortable bunks and settees.

The late Angus Primrose, lolling about at the start of the 1980 OSTAR (where the dear man sadly was lost) had created Gipsy Moth IV and Galway Blazer – both attractive. But he laughed with us spellbound reporters about his Moody design as ‘a block o’flats!’

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They have many direct descendants floating whitely around the coast today, giving joy. Though possibly rolling like pigs when becalmed and lurching a bit at anchor when wind and tide are at odds.

You can tie yourself in Platonic knots about what beauty actually is, whether in an artwork or an object. I was told in a school philosophy class that traditionally there should be three ingredients – proportion, integrity, and ‘splendour’, the last being that curious uncatchable thing which creates wonder. And which could, of course, be provided just by the glint of sunset on your boat as you row back across a calm western anchorage.

But proportion does matter, even in a ‘block of flats’. And as for integrity, that is the essence of any boat. If it’s fit for its duty, it must carve through the water, stand bad weather, forgive the odd skipper’s error and provide at the end of the day a secure and comfortable home to huddle in.

Maybe at that time, when we are weary and worried and glad to have made it into a harbour (which also may not be at all pretty) all boats are beautiful if they look after us properly.

We can’t expect every experience of sailing to offer poetic glory: moments offering ‘a ship, an isle, a sickle moon’ do happen, but quite often, at the end of the day, it’s more like ‘a floating caravan, a broken gasometer, and drizzle’.

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