How stern gear quietly transformed decades of yacht design

Three decades of DAME Design Award winners show just how much thinking goes into the bits of a boat most owners take for granted, the gear bolted to the stern. A look back at a trio of overall winners reveals how aft-deck equipment quietly reshaped the way yachts are designed and used.

Go back to 1998 and most motor yachts and large sailing cruisers were still carrying traditional stainless steel davits, heavy, angular, and not especially easy to use. The Montague Smith Crane Davit, that year's DAME winner, changed that conversation almost overnight.

Built from Kevlar reinforced epoxy resin as a one-piece moulding, it halved the weight of an equivalent stainless davit, a saving that mattered at the extreme aft end of any boat. Its curved composite shell also hid away the installation foot and bolts entirely, and builders could order it in custom colours to match the hull. It also featured a fully integrated, enclosed winch operated with a standard winch handle, using epicyclic gearing to remove the need for brakes or ratchets and prevent runaways.

It never achieved widespread adoption, but its arrival came right at the start of a complete rethink in how tenders and toys would be handled in the decades that followed.

Four years later, Besenzoni's G 326 MAGIC hydraulic davit, the 2002 winner, pushed the idea further. A three-section telescopic jib with a 1.43m reach and 300kg capacity folded away into a composite-clad enclosure just 490mm x 450mm x 600mm high, bolted to the boat's stern platform. Control was via a wired waterproof remote, with a safety alarm sounding whenever the unit was moving.

The timing wasn't accidental. Boatbuilders in the early 2000s were expanding bathing platforms into proper social spaces, strong enough to land a dinghy or host a small party. Owners were already paying marinas for the overhang of davit-stowed dinghies, so the logic followed: use that length for the greater benefit of all aboard.

Besenzoni could have built something purely functional. Instead, the Jury highly commended an approach that enhanced the boat's looks rather than spoiling them. The MAGIC still features in Besenzoni's catalogue today, since joined by a larger G 336 BIG MAGIC with a longer jib for garage installations.

By 2007 the question had shifted again: what do you do with all that new flat deck space aft? Opacmare's answer was the Teaky beach, the overall winner that year, an electrically or hydraulically actuated sun lounger that folds up into position from the deck. The Jury found it a very comfortable place to hang out, with only the cushions needing to be stowed to revert to a flat deck.

It looks simple from above. Underneath, though, the lift mechanism needed only about 75mm (3in) of depth below the deck surface, avoiding any impact on cabin height below. Available in a single-backrest version or as a deck chair with one fixed and three movable sections across three width variants, and operated by remote control and a digital control panel, it remains in Opacmare's range today, since joined by a retractable sunbed/bathing platform extension.

What links all three is the blurred line between builder and equipment manufacturer, each playing a co-equal part in integrating this kind of feature into the yacht. That collaboration has only grown in the nearly two decades since, with transformer-like features such as the fold-down aft bulwarks pioneered on the Galeon 500 Fly by past DAME Design Awards chair Tony Castro in 2015.