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As the Dutch found dominance in sea power during the 17th century, the initial yacht was a leisure craft used initially by royalty and secondly by the burghers in the canals as well as the protected and unprotected waters of the Low Countries. Yacht racing was incidental, coming out of private challenges. English yachting began with King Charles II of England during his exile in the Low Countries. On his reaffirmation to the English throne in 1660, the city of Amsterdam presented him with a 20-metre (66-foot) pleasure boat with a beam (maximum width) of 5.6 m (18 feet), which he called Mary. Charles and his brother James, the duke of York (James II, ruled 1685–88), made additional yachts and in 1662 raced two of them from the Thames, from Greenwich, to Gravesend, and the same way back, on a £100 punt. Yachting was found to be fashionable with the rich and royalty, but after that time the trend did not last.

The first yacht group in the British Isles, the Water Club, was formed in about 1720 at Cork, Ire., as a cruising and unofficial coast guard association, and held much naval panoply and formality. The closest thing to a race was the “chase,” for which the “fleet” pursued a fictional enemy. The club went on, mostly as a social club, until 1765, and in 1828, by conglomerating with other organisations, it became the Cork Yacht Club (later the Royal Cork Yacht Club).

Yacht racing was seen in some stipulated fashion on the Thames in the mid-18th century. The duke of Cumberland founded the Cumberland Fleet for Thames racing in 1775. When George IV rose to sovereignty in 1820, it came to be called the Fleet to His Majesty’s Coronation Sailing Society. The Thames Yacht Club seceded with a racing dispute, to become the Royal Thames Yacht Club in 1830. The first English yacht association had been initiated 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 association at Cowes became the Royal Yachting Club, again at the ascension of George IV. All members were required to possess boats of at least 20 tons (20,321 kg). Sailing races for large bids were held, and the society life was lovely. Ultimately Royal Yachting Club boats grew in size to bigger than 350 tons.

In 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 for the most part for pleasure and reached its epitome in George Crowinshield’s Cleopatra’s Barge (1815), which traveled on the Mediterranean Sea and created a minimum of luxury and elegance for the later yachts in that area from the late 19th century. The first persisting American yacht association, the Detroit Boat Club, was instigated in 1839. In 1844, John C. Stevens instigated the New York Yacht Club while on board his schooner Gimcrack.

Kinds of sailboats
The Early sailing yachts were within the style of such naval craft as brigantines, schooners, and cutters from the 17th century until the later half of the 19th century. The style of sizeable yachts was first largely put upon by the success of America, which was designed by George Steers for a syndicate headed by John C. Stevens, and it was the boat for which the America’s Cup (q.v.) found its namesake after its win at Cowes in 1851. Earlier yachts were not designed and manufactured in today’s sense, with only a model for an outline. Not until the second half of the 19th century did what was called naval architecture come into being. Not until the 1920s did the application of the science of aerodynamics do for the structure of sails and rigging what it had done earlier for hulls.

Because most of all sailboats had to be individually manufactured, there came a desire for handicapping boats as this was before the one-design class boats were designed. Therefore, a rating rule was created, which is found in the International Rule, adopted in 1906 and amended in 1919. Today, one of the rapidly growing areas in the sailing industry is that of one-design class boats. All boats in a one-design class are manufactured to single requirements in length, beam, sail area, and other elements (for an example of a two-person sailboat, see illustration). Racing these boats can be done on an even keel with no handicapping required. A great example is the uniform International America’s Cup Class taken on for racers in the 1992 America’s Cup race.

So long as yachting belonged primarily for the nobility and the wealthy, money was no issue, and the size of boats developed, in both length and weight. The promotion and popularity of smaller yachts happened in the second half of the 19th century from the sailing of the Englishmen R.T. McMullen, a stockbroker, and E.F. Knight, a barrister and journalist. A voyage around the world (1895–98) captained single-handedly by the naturalized American captain Joshua Slocum in the 11.3-metre Spray demonstrated the seaworthiness of less sizeable yachts. Later in the 20th century, for the larger part after World War II, smaller racing and recreational boats became commonplace, down to the dinghy, a preferred training boat, of 3.7 m. In the late 20th century, yachts of less than 3 m were sailed single-handedly across the Atlantic Ocean.

Kinds of power yachts
Following the decade 1840–50, during which steam was set to take the place of sail power in public boats, the steam engine, and later the internal-combustion engine, were increasingly favoured in pleasure craft. Sizeable power yachts were developed to a high element, and long-distance cruising turned into a favoured activity of the wealthy. The early power yachts were paddle-wheel boats; those then gave rise to boats powered by the fully submerged screw or propeller kind of propulsion. As well as naval and merchant yachts, auxiliaries possessing both sail and power were the yacht standard for many years. By the second half of the 20th century, many yachts were still auxiliaries, but the larger part were solely power yachts that had gasoline or diesel engines.

During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the design of large steam yachts. Notably among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull, and was sailed by a crew of over 150. The Mayflower, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the president of the United States until 1929 and gave active service in World War II.

As larger and better quality internal-combustion engines were produced, many large boats started using them for power. The establishment of the diesel engine, with heavy oil for fuel, progressed from World War I. From the decade following that, large power-yacht building flourished, reaching a climax in the Orion (1930) at 3,097 tons. During that point the best auxiliary yacht built was the four-masted, steel, barque-rigged Sea Cloud (1931) of 2,323 tons.

The construction of bigger power yachts declined after 1932, and the style after that was in preference of smaller, less expensive boats. Following World War II, many small naval craft were traded by private owners for conversion to yachts. At the late 20th century, yachting has become a internationally loved competition enjoyed by thousands of yachtsmen individually manning and maintaining their own small pleasure yachts. The amount of craft and sailors is increasing steadily, not only in the traditional locations by the beach but also on inland waterways and lakes.

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