Is it a boat or a yacht? Handgrenade question

[PierreR]

I bought a boat two months ago and never once have I considered it a yacht. Went to the ski slopes today where I am a total guru and word was out that I might bought a winter escape pod. After showing pictures and explaining the boat everyone was chiding me about buying a yacht, not a boat.
I my mind a yacht is a big ass new boat on the cover of a money magazine with a guy dressed to the nines, hugging his trophy wife in a sunset. Not two old farts in a Hatteras 42 long Range Cruiser Grandpa/Grandma sleeps four persons slow boat. I grew up around the Great Lakes were everything is a boat.
I went home today and looked up the definition of a yacht and now I am not sure. My friends may not be entirely wrong but emotionally, it sure don't feel like my conjured up image of yacht.
I seem to be running head long into a number of nautical definition problems lately. What say you?

 

[AlaskaProf]

I my mind a yacht is a big ass new boat on the cover of a money magazine with a guy dressed to the nines, hugging his trophy wife in a sunset

Nice try, but a little defensive.


--former yachtsman

 

[Delta Riverat]

Per Wiki a yacht begins at 10 meters (33 feet) which is also the USCG line for "small craft"

So if you have a "forty" you have a yacht.

But due to the "current social conditions", most just call it a boat.

Well unless you really do have a yacht with a helo pad and a helo on deck and a captain and crew, yeah you have a yacht!

 

[O C Diver]

A boat becomes a yacht when the owner is a member of a yacht club.

Ted

 

[BruceK]

In Australia "yacht" usually means what USA calls "sailboat". If "yacht" is used describing a powerboat, it`s often qualified by "motor", ie. a "motor yacht'.

 

[PierreR]

Per Wiki a yacht begins at 10 meters (33 feet) which is also the USCG line for "small craft"

So if you have a "forty" you have a yacht.

But due to the "current social conditions", most just call it a boat.

Well unless you really do have a yacht with a helo pad and a helo on deck and a captain and crew, yeah you have a yacht!

Gotta laugh, we are in the same boat pun intended.

My boat does not meet the definition of luxury. I can't take a 10 minute shower.

 

[READY]

A definition of a yacht I heard many years ago: "A yacht is a any boat larger/more expensive than the listener can afford." I think this has a lot of merit. So yacht is a relative term.

 

[slowgoesit]

I prefer to think of our boat as just that, a boat, especially when purchasing parts . . . . but many people would think of it as a yatchet . . . I mean yacht. Whatever, probably best defined with the old definition, "A hole in the water into which you endlessly pour money". In the almost 2 years we've owned our current "boat", I'm embarrassed to admit just how much money we've spent on upgrades/improvements . . . .
But we use the heck out of her, and enjoy her immensely!

 

[Arc]

yacht ‘N’ definition
1- boat you can’t afford
2 - how you described your boat after 1:00 AM

 

[PierreR]

I'm LMAO. Everyone else here has a boat. I am not alone. Maybe yachts only exist in the minds of used yacht brokers.

 

[Comodave]

It is which ever term you prefer. I call mine a boat and I do belong to a yacht club. But it always felt pretentious to say yacht for a forty something boat.

 

[Delta Riverat]

I agree. But I do like not being in the "small craft" club anymore.

Small craft advisories can now be ignored -

 

[Peter B]

OK, definition from Oxford Dictionary...
yacht
[jɒt]
NOUN
a medium-sized sailing boat equipped for cruising or racing.

So, BruceK's #5 post is probably the most correct. And yes, if referring to a large vessel they are usually referred to as Motor Yacht, or Super Yacht. So, you're either a yachtie, (sailor), or a boatie (motor boat pilot). Or a multi-millionare with a large toy. Just sayin'...

 

[CharlieO.]

It's a yacht if that hot girl asks about it.
It's a boat if the tax man asks.

 

[North Baltic sea]

Hi.

I am approaching this matter officially.

I approach this matter according to the official definition. All our "trawler, boat, yatch, etc" are simply named vessels. When we move with a motor, the name changes to power drive vessel, this is the official terminology that can be found in the rules we all know

Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, 1972 (COLREGs)

NBs

 

[Group9]

We were waiting to go through a lock one day, behind a tug pushing a couple of barges. The lock operator radioed the tug captain and asked if he was ready to lock through.

He replied, “Yeah, and there’s a yacht behind me waiting to go through, too”. My friend who was standing nearby heard it, too, and said, “Well, that makes it official. You own a yacht!”

 

[Iggy]

A boat becomes a yacht when the owner is a member of a yacht club.

Ted

Thats great!

In the Insurance world, anything over 26' to 30' Depending on the company.

From Wikipedia To be termed a yacht, as opposed to a boat, such a pleasure vessel is likely to be at least 33 feet (10 m) in length and may have been judged to have good aesthetic qualities.

 

[danderer]

I've always defined a yacht as a boat bigger than mine.

 

[Judy at JWY]

Confession: If I am talking to a Seller about listing his vessel, I usually call it a boat or a vessel. If talking to a Buyer about fulfilling a dream, I call her a yacht. For me, it is the first step in helping the Seller become disattached from his beloved possession, it de-personalizes it.

I think there is an underlying psychological pride in owning a yacht even if it's a boat. No harm in that! You've earned that right to call your dream whatever you want.

 

[PierreR]

Well I have had some good sleep now and I am a bit more clear headed about this. I thought this was going to deteriorate into a free for all about the definition of a yacht but the clear pattern is that there is a stigmatism and no one wants to wear the label of "Yacht" except the brokers. No one here sees themselves on the cover of a magazine on their boat and that brings me to the "Dah" moment.
I am an elite level alpine skier and trying to deny that is like the guy with the helicopter on his boat claiming he does not own a yacht. In that crowd, they all look at me as having alien powers so naturally they are going to put me on a yacht; DAH. It has nothing to do with definitions and everything to do with how they perceive me. Those with the most insistence are the groupies whom don't believe in themselves.
They are afraid that I have purchased a winter escape pod and for the most part, they are correct. I have skied 63 years. 63 years of not visiting warm sunny weather and nice beaches, enduring cold snowy weather. It's time to pass the torch. I have trained some elite level skiers. It's time to pass the torch, my physical ability is waning and my wife cannot stand snow. Time to ski emeritus with a few appearances each winter and enjoy a life long dream of cruising full time.

 

[PierreR]

Judy, I have always admired your candor and honesty from way back in the early days of trawlers and trawlering.

 

[Judy at JWY]

Thanks, Pierre, I very much appreciate your comment. I think there are quite a few of us old-timers from the T & T days on TF. I always feel I am amongst friends here, sharing our knowledge and experiences as a common bond, and it makes candid postings easier.

 

[Shrew]

In most other parts of the world, any Private Vessel is considered a Yacht. Additional information such as 'Sailing' Yacht, or 'Motor' Yacht can be added. It is to differentiate from Working and military vessels.

 

[Pete Meisinger]

I own a "Boat" which I often refer to as a "Trawler" but since so many non boaters have no idea what a trawler is I sometimes have to describe it as "Sort of a yacht".

pete

 

[Nick14]

My own personal definition, if I can afford it, it's a boat. If I can't afford it, it's a yacht.

 

[Northern Spy]

Yacht is the term your wife's divorce lawyer uses for your boat.

 

[Osprey69]

I always cringe when folks ask what kind of boat it is and I say motor yacht but I think that is its official configuration... a "Motor Yacht" as opposed to Trawler, Convertible, Sportfish, etc.

Sailboats have their own similar designations, e.g. ULDB, Pilothouse, Motorsailer, etc.

Generically I always considered a professionally crewed any-boat as a "Yacht".

 

[kthoennes]

Mainship officially designated our model boat a "Motor Yacht" but it's funny, whenever I have to actually use that phrase -- like on our marina paperwork for the annual slip lease -- I put quotes around it on purpose, because I wouldn't want anybody to think I'd use that word myself. I'm not Thurston Howell III for pete's sake. And when we still had a loan on the boat, the credit union used Mainship's model name and the teller and I would always laugh and roll our eyes when I made the payment.

The use and implication of that word is indeed very regional too. Having grown up on the Connecticut Shore, yachts typically meant sailboats, not power. The Kennedys sailed yachts out of Hyannis. If I had to put a fine edge on it, a yacht was any sailboat big enough to have an enclosed cabin. Therefore my Blue Jay was not a yacht. Large motor boats on the other hand were "cruisers" and when I was a kid, I don't think the phrase "super yacht" was ever used, or at least wasn't used that I ever noticed. There were just a few exceptions, but so rare I still remember most of them. John Wayne's Wild Goose. The royal yacht Britannia. The Presidential Yacht Sequoia, which was power or course, not sail, was always called a yacht. Or the Honey Fitz, but then if any motor vessel ever deserved the word "yacht" it was grand old -- boats? ships? -- like that. My parents are still disgusted that Jimmy Carter and then Nixon ever sold those. Or gave away the Panama Canal for that matter, but that's another story...

 

[Hippocampus]

“yacht (n.)
1550s, yeaghe "a light, fast-sailing ship," from Norwegian jaght or early Dutch jaght, both from Middle Low German jacht, shortened form of jachtschip "fast pirate ship," literally "ship for chasing," from jacht "chase," from jagen "to chase, hunt," from Old High German jagon, from Proto-Germanic *yago-, from PIE root *yek- (2) "to hunt" (source also of Hittite ekt- "hunting net"). Related: Yachting; yachtsman.”

 

[SteveK]

Motoryacht is factory painted on my boat, so it must be true, I have a yacht.