Dame Award winner

Birgit Schnaase, Chairwoman of the Jury, presented the prestigious DAME Award 2017 at the METSTRADE show to Scanstrut for its RS Venture Connect Conversion Kit.

14 November 2017

A further six products were named as Category Winners and 16 received Special Mentions.

The Scanstrut Venture Connect Conversion Kit retrospectively adapts an RS Venture, a dinghy designed for able-bodied sailors that is already in common use in many training and sailing centres. The plug and play kit includes a combined battery and control pack, a powered mainsheet winch, joystick control and sip-puff headset option. Fully self-contained, it enables a sailing instructor to convert the boat to one suitable for use by those with a wide range of disabilities, including paraplegia, in only 30 minutes.

The Jury praised Scanstrut for delivering a well-designed and fully integrated solution with attention to every detail that will allow a broader range of disabled people to get on the water and enjoy the same benefits as others.

Commenting on the result, Chairwoman of the Jury, Birgit Schnaase stated, “I work a lot in the superyacht sector and saw good entries that apply there, but I was also pleased to see products with personal applications that you can touch, see, feel and understand. Our overall winner is a very good example of that.”

“The marine sector’s end users are changing – the younger generations often do not have their own boat and need highly accessible products; the industry’s wealthier customers have individual and often very different ideas of what they demand of a boat and its equipment. We also need to be much more aware of the need to address diversity. We saw welcome evidence that products are being developed to address these market changes.”

“Our strong team of new and existing Jury members are highly qualified across many disciplines, including interior, engineering, systems and industrial design and naval architecture, as well as user application. They each saw entries this year of particular interest in their own fields and applied their own considerable knowledge and experience to the debate. There were many detailed discussions throughout our time together about the products themselves and the effect they will have within the marine industry in future days.”

DAME 2017 WINNER