New York Times Magazine

photo courtesy of Riva Yacht           
To answer this blog’s titular question in short: Of course it does. The real question, masked by that rhetorical one, is “How much does yacht design matter?” It matters to boaters, and to those who are thoughtful enough to understand the importance of boat design in the greater context of how it represents and reminds us of our collective past, and how its halo affects other kinds of design.