Winner of the YDOY Award.

The 2024 YDOY Award winner is the Indonesian Pradipta R. Hakim's concept yacht, Blueminance. For the first time ever, Feadship is serving as an official sponsor of YDOY, an initiative that encourages innovation and quality in the yacht design industry. The announcement took place Thursday night in Kitzbühel, Austria, during the Boat International Design & Innovation Awards ceremony.

A well-known venue for young, up-and-coming designers to demonstrate their abilities and get noticed in the superyacht sector is the esteemed YDOY award. “At Feadship, we firmly believe in nurturing aspiring talent and fostering a culture of attainable innovation in yacht design. This collaboration with BOAT International Media allows us to share our profound passion and extensive expertise with the next generation of designers,” said Farouk Nefzi, Chief Marketing Officer at Feadship.

The participants, who must all be younger than 28, were asked to put themselves in the shoes of a young designer working at Feadship's design branch, Studio De Voogt, for this year's competition. It was their job to come up with a concept design for a superyacht that Feadship could use for their yacht shows. A complete and functional deck plan, incorporation of environmental improvements, use of current and "near-future" technologies, and a focus on the future were all needed by the requirement. The designer might decide how long the boat should be. Additionally, contestants were tasked with creating an interior design proposal that would take into account the potential future lifestyle changes of the owners.

Twelve experts in superyacht design served as the jury, and they selected six finalists from the 26 entries before convening for a full day of deliberation and voting. Jury Chairman Roger Lean-Vercoe said Hakim’s “well-presented design showed strong, innovative, and attractive lines, which were accompanied by an extremely well-drawn general arrangement plan and an appealing interior design.”

Tanno Weeda, Studio De Voogt’s Head of Design, notes that Hakim’s presentation “immediately made me curious and would like to know more about it. He presented good substantiation for his concept. I believe it is a buildable, Feadship-worthy design.”

An enthusiastic supporter of Feadship’s decision to partner with Boat International Media for the seventeenth edition of the YDOY programme, Weeda added, “It is important that young talents can develop within the yachting industry and are informed of new technology. We want to encourage a generation of open-minded, new people who are not yet in a design straitjacket to join and excel in the yachting industry.”

Publicly funded and situated in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia's Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology is home to student champion Pradipta R. Hakim. The school places a premium on STEM fields, particularly those that serve the nautical and industrial sectors. Hakim receives a monetary reward of €3,000 to use towards his professional ambitions, in addition to chances to attend Feadship and superyacht exhibits throughout the year.