titleYachting and Yacht Clubs/titleAs the Dutch found preeminence in sea power during the 17th century, the early yacht was a leisure craft used initially by royalty and then by the burghers for the canals and the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Racing was incidental, borne from private matches. English yachting started with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his return to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam gave him a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he then named Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, reigned 1685 88), made other yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and returning, on a 100 bet. Yachting rose as classy among the rich and aristocracy, but after that point the fashion did not last./p pThe first yacht association in the British Isles, the Water Club, was instigated around about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard group, and had great naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the chase, when the fleet pursued a fictional enemy. The club endured, for the large part as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by merging with other organisations, it was known as the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club)./p pYacht racing began in some ordered method on the Thames around the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland instigated the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV came to sovereignty in 1820, it was then called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded following a racing fight, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht society had been started at Cowes on the Isle of Wight in 1815, and royal patronage made the Solent - the strait between the mainland and the Isle of Wight - the perpetual site of British yachting. The club at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. Every member was required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for high stakes were held, and the society life was splendid. It came to be that the Royal Yachting Club boats increased in size to more than 350 tons./p pIn North America, yachting was first accomplished with the Dutch in New York in the 17th century and continued when the English held dominance. Sailing was largely for pleasure and found its high point in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created a standard of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in those waters from the late 19th century. The first enduring American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was formed in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens founded the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack./p pstrongKinds of sailboatsbr //strongEarly sailing yachts followed the design of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century through the second half of the 19th century. The craft of bigger yachts was first greatly affected by the victory of America, which was designed by George Steers for a group started by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its victory at Cowes in 1851. The first yachts were not designed and built in today’s sense, with merely a model used. Not until the later half of the 19th century did what was labeled naval architecture come about. Not until the 1920s did the employment of the study of aerodynamics do for the design of sails and rigging what such study had already done for hulls./p pBecause most of all sailboats had to be individually custom-built, there arose a requirement for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were built. Therefore, a rating rule was written, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. In the present day, one of the rapidly blossoming areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are built to standard specifications in length, beam, sail area, and other aspects (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing between these boats can be done on an even playing field with no handicapping required. A prime example is the generic International America’s Cup Class taken on for yachts in the 1992 America’s Cup race./p pAs long as yachting was an activity largely for the aristocracy and the rich, money was no issue, and the size of boats increased, in both length and weight. The rise and preference of smaller craft came in the later half of the 19th century in the sailing of the Englishmen R.T. McMullen, a stockbroker, and E.F. Knight, a barrister and journalist. A trip around the world (1895 98) sailed single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray proved the value of smaller craft. Following this in the 20th century, particularly after World War II, smaller racing and pleasure yachts became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a favourite training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, boats of less than 3 m were traveled in single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean./p pstrongKinds of power yachtsbr //strongAfter the decade 1840 50, when steam began to emulate sail power in commercial craft, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were employed more and more in personal craft. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance cruising became a fond pastime of the affluent. The earliest power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller sort of propulsion. As in the case of naval and merchant vessels, auxiliaries with both sail and power were the yacht standard for a number of years. By the latter half of the 20th century, several yachts were still auxiliaries, but the large part were only power yachts with gasoline or diesel engines./p pIn the last decade of the 19th century there was a push in the construction of bigger steam yachts. In particular within these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, that had triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was manned by a crew of over 150. The Mayflower, commissioned by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and saw active service in World War II./p pAs bigger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many bigger boats started using them for power. The creation of the diesel engine, using heavy oil for fuel, advanced from World War I. During the decade following, large power-yacht manufacture flourished, hitting a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the largest auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons./p pThe manufacture of large power yachts declined in 1932, and the trend thereafter was in preference of smaller, less expensive boats. From World War II, a lot of small naval vessels were bought by private owners for conversion to yachts. In the late 20th century, yachting is a widespread beloved sport enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen personally manning and keeping their own small leisure craft. The popularity of craft and sailors has increased steadily, not only in the traditional places by the seacoasts but also on inland waterways and lakes./p pLooking for a href=http://eliteyachtservices.com.au/detailing-and-cleaning/boat detailing Gold Coast/a ? Talk to Elite Yacht Services. We do great work at competitive prices./p