At what length does a boat become a yacht?

Hi Sink or Swim:

Nomenclature can be so tiring. "Boating" or "Yachting" or "SuperYachts"...

When I tell my office manager I'm off to do seatrials on an 87-footer, I'm "going for a boat ride".

When I'm playing hooky, I'll call & tell her that I'm going "yachting" and she knows that I'll be out on Biscayne Bay on my 16-ft. kayak.

"Superyachts"? That's what 130-footers used to be called ten years ago, but I'd suppose much less than 250 feet nowadays hardly qualifies.

Check back in a year or so--it'll all change.


It's a matter of mindset.

Built - and am still building - BOATS.

Everything from a 16' Cape Cod dory to 50 metre big-ass boats.

Now - as with the shoemaker whose children have no shoes - if I could just afford the time away from nonstop building goddam boats for a living, I could build me a simple little 22' Calkins Bartender and die and go to heaven..............

so it goes

jsi

Depends on the recipient of the term. If it is a seller, it's a boat. If it's a buyer, it's a yacht.

Learned this one from an employer

"A Yacht is what a pretentious person calls his boat"

Shouldn't that be the other way around?

We want the seller to detach emotionally from his vessel. We want the buyer to become Ken's pretentious owner with bragging rights.

The real estate equivalent is a seller is selling his house, but a buyer is looking for his new home.

Emotional verbiage that really sounds more prescribed than practiced.

OK, now I understand. It's all about perspective...

As a broker, you want the seller to be detached.

But when I'm the seller... my 25 footer is a YACHT!

Key point I think. Very often on other sites I see guys going on and on and on about how fussy they are going to be about who they sell their boat to. As if the buyer is assumed to be low life until proven otherwise. When I turned my boat over to a broker, he told me "forget this boat as of now, as it's no longer your property". And he was perfectly right.

Kelly

I need to apologize... I've been searching YF for threads relevant to the question, but to no avail. Somewhere in the GY forum, we had a thread that outlined designation by length. I remember it, because I posted it. But as Loren stated, the designation seems to be changing by the year.

Let's put this question to rest. At what point a boat becomes designated a yacht is subject to debate, but for the new-fangled prefixes that have accompanied the magnitude of new, larger yachts, I seem to recall the following...

Yacht = up to 100'.
MegaYacht = 100' to 150'.
SuperYacht = 150' and up.

Then, a YF member intro'd the term "GigaYacht" (I think it was Lars, maybe Rene), but in fact the title had been reserved as a domain name some years earlier. If I remember correctly...

GigaYacht = 300' and above.

What's the general consensus among members? Are these numbers an acceptable "rule of thumb"? Or should they be altered to remove the word "yacht" from the vocabulary of mortals, because a 70 footer is a dinghy by today's standards!

Eh???? Here I thought it was the megayachts that were bigger than the superyachts?

TOTALLY confused Kelly

try a search on "gigayacht" on google - yachtforum is settings the standards on yachting

Well......

From the shorter OED;

Yacht. 1557. Early modern Dutch. Jaghie = jaghischip, fast piratical ship. f. jag(h)t hunting, f. jagen, hunt. A light fast-sailing ship, in early use esp. for the conveyance of royal or other important persons; later, a vessel, usu. light and comparatively small, for cruising, now esp. one built and rigged for racing 1886.

Just so.

So we have the question of sail vs. mechanical propulsion.

And the question of the purpose and proportion built.

jsi

A 'pretentious kayaker' has to be the oxymoron of oxymorons.

How about this:

A boat will fit aboard a yacht, but not vice-versa

Chapman's has a section that goes into the definition of a yacht. I don't have access to my issue right now. It's in a box. Strange feeling, you know... when your whole life fits into a 15 X 20 storage facility.

Getting back on subject, I'm not sure "length" designates the difference between a boat and a yacht. For example... when I think of a 70+ foot express cruiser, I refer to it as a "boat". In contrast, when I think of a 72' Broward... that's a "yacht".

Is it a matter of stature? An undefined aesthetic element that conjures up a preconceived notion? I'm not sure, but I can say this... when a status-seeking, monetarily-inclined woman asks how big my boat is, she'll always get the same answer...

It's a row boat! You don't mind rowing, do you?

I agree with Carl that the type of boat makes a real difference. My "yacht" threshold for a trawler would be much, much lower than for a mid-cabin cruiser.

Kelly

I would say that all yachts are boats, but not all boats are yachts...