Boat vs. "yacht"

[Tom Cooper]

yacht or not

not all boats without spreaders are stink pot some are Hunter Vison 32 and 36 with a 49 ft mast is my Vison 32 a yacht or a boat.Tom cooper V32 Prologue 1

 

[Capn Ellis]

Well, here's my two cents ...

I bought my used 1987 Hunter 26.5 from Norton's YACHT Sales in Deltaville, Va., so, dammit, it's a yacht!

 

[Maine Sail]

If you insist..

If you feel better calling a 26 footer a yacht then go for it but just know the reason why others will look at you strangely when doing so. I've also never referred to my self as "Cap'n or Captain" either. To each his own..

 

[sailortonyb Allied Mis]

I agree with Mainsail

"If you feel better calling a 26 footer a yacht",not only will people look at you in a strange way, but they will also be holding back laughter. If its recognition you want, everyone at the marina will know and talk about it. You wont go unrecognized.I owned and flew an ultra light airplane and never did I refer to it as an airplane or myself as a pilot. If the topic came up, I would say 'I owned and flew an ultra light'Ditto on the Captain thing. I am not familiar with large ships, but i can tell you that on crew boats and supply boats in the Gulf , generally, no one calls the captain 'captain'. Tony B

 

[Steve Christensen]

Who is driving?

The definition my friends and I have always used is that whether a boat is a yacht depends on who is doing the driving. If you are driving, it's a boat. If your paid crew are doing the driving, it's a yacht.Steve Christensen

 

[cat38skip]

Ice Cream

If you can keep ice cream frozen without shore power ..... You have a Yacht !

 

[Larry Schultz]

Sailing "Yacht"

I am uncomfortable with good useful words that people turn into forbidden language because of some bad experience or bad memory it brings up. I have heard a 37' sailboat called a yacht by its owner who had 40 years of sailing experience and taught sailing at the Naval Academy and it did not sound pretentious to me. To me at the time it sounded like respect for his boat and respect for the sea and doing things "by the book". Anyone who thinks a 25 or 35 foot boat doesn't need some respect is fooling themselves. Context is everything and certainly it is good to understand that some people may be sensitive to the word....but don't take my words away.

 

[newly anonymous]

Read more carefully

The definition I proposed, and you quoted, MS, was that a megayacht would have MORE THAN three spreaders. Orinoco--which I assume was named for the South American river--merely has three spreaders, which according to my definition would make her a "proper yacht."She's an attractive yacht, nonetheless. Hard to tell from one photo, but it certainly looks like a Carl Shumacher design from this perspective. Didn't know you had any of those up there in Maine.**************I find myself in agreement with Larry, no sense taking a good word out of use, because the language police always lose in the end. At the college where I teach, they insist that we call the dormitories "residence halls," while at my yacht club there are folk who insist on calling their yachts a "boat." What's that about?

 

[Derek Rowell]

Where I grew up (in New Zealand)...

... all sailboats were yachts, even down to the little 8ft P-class. When you went sailing you went "yachting", and those who went sailing were "yachties". If your "yacht" had a fixed keel, it was a "keeler".