Defining a Yacht
Anchorline 45.1 January, 2020
Where is the line drawn between a boat and yacht? At what price point, or size, or accumulation of bells and whistles is a boat to be considered a yacht? These questions scratched my curiosity and led me to question my own boat’s status. They may seem like simple questions to answer, and for a more experienced sailor, they most likely are. However, for a first-time owner of a boat that wasn’t already named John, I admittedly did not know. As it turns out, the answers to each of the above are a mix-match of maybe-so and it-depends.
My boat, Lonesome Dove, is a Lancer 27. Built in 1985, this power sailor was manufactured by Lancer Yacht Corporation, USA, and as one can infer from the builder’s name, she gets a point in the yacht column right off the bat. I am biased of course, but after visiting the website of Westlawn Institute of Marine Technology (WIMT), I am confident that anybody who has been aboard her, will agree with my assessment.
According to WIMT, a craft is any vessel that operates in a fluid medium (or vacuum when referring to space and/or spacecraft, but we’ll exclude that material from the present conversation. This means that when we speak about a vessel that floats on the surface of the water, any boat or ship, regardless of size or type or purpose of use, is a craft. A small craft, as defined by the WIMT, is a term reserved for use when referring to boats, and only those less than 197 feet length overall (LOA).
Lonesome Dove: 27 feet LOA; craft; small craft; boat. Check.
Things got a little interesting when I read about pleasure crafts. According to the esteemed institute, and apparently by convention, a pleasure craft is a small to medium sized boat used for recreational purposes. They set a commonly accepted LOA for small to medium size boats as those less than approximately 80 feet. They further expound that pleasure craft is a term applied to boats “too small to be termed yachts” (WIMT, 2015). Removing more wind from my sails, they allow for pleasure crafts with an LOA of 30 feet to be referred to as either, yacht or pleasure craft.
Lonesome Dove: 27 feet LOA; pleasure craft. Check.
Yacht? Up for debate! I eventually scrolled to their definition of a yacht, and was not entirely excited to face the truth about my boat; my pleasure craft; my maybe-yacht. Here, things did not look good. The definition began by describing a vessel which is moderately large. Additionally, the characteristics echo the 30’ minimum LOA, which works against team LD. There was hope, however, and it came from within the very section regarding yachts. According to WIMT, “There is no firm lower-end- cut -off for the size of a yacht,” and the 30’ LOA is “generally” and “approximately” said to be the case. That would have been enough for me to order a United States Yacht Ensign on the spot, but then I read about the elegance that the word yacht connotes. And with the following sentence, WIMT presented the closing argument to my case: “Thus some pleasure boats under 30 feet (9.1 meters), which are particularly elegant or expensive, may occasionally be called yachts.”
Lonesome Dove: 27 feet LOA; elegant. Check. Yacht. Check.
Semper Fidelis,
Aaron Courts, Director
Reference: www.westlawn.edu/index.asp
Note: this article was originally published in the Santa Margarita Yacht Club monthly newsletter, Anchorline, vol. 45 iss. 1, in January 2020.
Love the name of your “yacht”!