MYS 19: Tony Castro Talks Trends in Design

Tony started with giving us the latest on his schedule, which simply put, sounds extremely busy. Having a lot of work on at present, Tony puts down to the wide range of projects he is willing to work on. He explains, “Perhaps unlike my contemporaries I do many different kinds of boats. Big ones, sail and power boats and I do a lot of production boats."

The designer further elaborates on the proportions of his projects, stating that only 20 percent of his current workload is attributed to sailing yachts, with the majority 80 percent on power boats. 

Tony confirms the decrease in demand for sailing yachts the industry is very aware of; “Sailboats have over the years declined unfortunately, and power boats of course, increased enormously.”

But luckily for Tony, and the industry of yacht design, there are some exciting trends on the horizon. “Right now with the Americans feeling very positive there’s a lot to do, so we are really absolutely flat out.” comments Tony on the US Market, confirming a message we’ve heard many times this week in the Breaking News Centre.  

More importantly though, Tony discusses the Explorer Trend, describing the uprise in demand for such vessels, “We all know very little about the ocean in reality. The idea that yachts can contribute to that knowledge you know, started a good few years ago. He continues, “With pressure on the plastics everywhere and so forth, I think the idea came about that yacht owners could offer the opportunity to scientists to come on board, maybe for a week or 10 days and for free, and they could carry out their experiments.”

Tony further explained the idea that owners and scientists can work together to create vessels that suit both of their needs, “This year there were two conferences, one in Monaco here and one in London which took that idea a bit deeper. It was quite interesting I went to them, and the real scientists were there. It was quite interesting to ask them ‘What exactly do you want to do?’ and ‘How do you do it?’ ‘Do we need to take a lot of boxes or a lot of equipment?’ and things like that. It was really interesting to finally get scientists in the same room as the yacht owners.”

We look forward to seeing the results of such discussions on the water in the very near future.