Does "yacht" sound pretentious?

I confess to discomfort describing the boat as a yacht, particularly when speaking to non-sailory people.
All to do with the connotations, I suppose.
Agreed, the word's meaning has changed over time. The origin is the middle-German/Dutch term jachtschip, shortened to jacht or jaght in Dutch.
Means hunting, or possibly, fast pirate ship.
As the word "fast" doesn't apply I will keep calling the boat a boat.
 
However big you're boat, it's a boat. Others might call it a yacht, powerboat, superyacht or megayacht. Your boat will usually have an engine or two and might have sails too, but to you it is always a boat.

Calling one's boat a "yacht" is the mark of a cad, sir. Not my words, but very appropriate.
 
tcm said:
Calling one's boat a "yacht" is the mark of a cad, sir. Not my words, but very appropriate.
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There's certainly a cad around. SWMBO used to tutor French and the mother of one of her students was always rather condescending towards her until she said "We went to St Tropez for the weekend and what did you do?" "Oh, I spent it with my husband on our yacht in the Solent." There was a subtle change in the relationship after that.
 
prv said:
No, it isn't :)

Wikipedia generally struggles when the usage of a word varies across place and time. That "yacht" page is a bit of a mess, reflecting what various different people mean by the term without making the differences clear.

Obviously some people use "yacht" to mean motorboats; I think this might be an American thing. To me, the basic term always means a sailing vessel, though "motor-yacht" is perfectly acceptable. "Superyacht" could be either, with a bias towards power - but that's because it's fundamentally a journalist's word rather than a sailor's. Otherwise, a motor boat is a "motorboat", a "motor cruiser", a "powerboat" (which implies small and very fast), or to my parents a "stinkpot" or "gin palace" (which seems rather unfair).

Pete
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To go to the horse's mouth
Lloyd`s Register of Yachts lists many of the world`s larger cruising and racing yachts. Inclusion was voluntary for owners, but nevertheless it is a very useful source of details of larger pleasure craft. It was published annually from 1878 until discontinued in 1980.

Lloyd`s Register of Yachts has similar aims to Lloyd`s Register of Ships - giving details of construction, dimensions and ownership of most pleasure craft over a certain size, plus survey and other details of classed yachts. A companion volume, Lloyd`s Register of American Yachts, provided similar detail for US and Canadian yachts from 1903 to 1977.

Subscribers could have the particulars of their yachts published in Lloyd`s Register of Yachts no matter what its size. Efforts were also made to include all sailing yachts with a sail area of at least 350 square feet and motor yachts of 27 feet and over.
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Robert Wilson said:
I have one of these boaty-floaty things. I think describing it as a yacht sounds pretentious and prefer to call it a boat/sailing boat.
Khamsin is 9m long, has a 10m mast, weighs 3.5t and so is definitely not a tiddler, but a yacht in my mind is something very large and probably a powered craft.

When does a boat become a yacht; be it sail or power? Anyone else feel a tad uncomfortable when referring to their craft as a yacht?
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My first boat was 16' & the insurance company said, that over 16' = yacht.
Below is a dinghy.
 
prv said:
"Captain" is ridiculous, but tolerable in non-English-speaking countries. The yanks also use it, and they have no excuse!

Pete
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everyone here in the USA is a 'Captain' it seems if they have the tiniest piece of paper qualification they can use to claim the title. The checkout ladies in our local West Marine store all wear name badges as 'Captain*** etc, pretentious IMO for people that know a bit about kayaks and stand up paddle boards and boaty boutique stuff but little about proper boats. SWMBOS are called Admirals too.:disgust:
 
Refer to Storyline as our boat when talking about her to people who I have just met, it just feels pretentious to say 'our yacht'. However when calling the coastguard I have always said, x Coastguard x Coastguard, Yacht Storyline, over.

It does, imo, have connotations of wealth however. A few years back I was going through a hard time financially and it was reported back to me that one of my so called friends had said 'poor Paul, he is down to his last yacht'
 
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Robert Wilson said:
I have one of these boaty-floaty things. I think describing it as a yacht sounds pretentious and prefer to call it a boat/sailing boat.
Khamsin is 9m long, has a 10m mast, weighs 3.5t and so is definitely not a tiddler, but a yacht in my mind is something very large and probably a powered craft.

When does a boat become a yacht; be it sail or power? Anyone else feel a tad uncomfortable when referring to their craft as a yacht?
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I avoid describing it as a yacht even though thats what it is, simply because of the money assumptions that other people make when you use the word. I call it a small boat because 36ftisnt that big these days anyway. Cant call is a Sailboat because thats a yankee expression.

Motorboats only stop being referred to as tart traps and become yachts when they are built by shipbuilders rather than the likes of Princess
 
Amongst family and crew we generally refer to Erbas as "the boat" but when talking to strangers, especially non sailors I usually call her a yacht for that is what she is

I don't find that awkward or pretentious and if people have an erroneous concept of what a yacht is that's not my problem :-)
 
Cardo said:
And as soon as you go abroad, you become the "Captain".
I still can't get used to being referred to as Captain. Skipper is far more informal, I can deal with that, but Captain? Bit pretentious, aint it?
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That's funny as I always consider myself to the PBO. Poor Bl**dy Owner. First came across that expression back in the mid 60's at the launching of a 38ft motorsailer.
 
Talk about fear of being pretentious!

If you don't want to call it a yacht, but won't call it a sailboat (because that's an American expression) that is the definition of pretentious.
If a motorboat is so-called because of that is it's motive power then a sailing yacht is a sailboat. Unless you are pretentious, of course.
 
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