Over two hundred years ago, yachting was a brand-new amateur sport of the moneyed classes in England, Scotland and Ireland. It got its name from the Dutch jacht, meaning ‘hunt’, a fast sailing craft used to hunt pirates on the coastal and inland waters of the Netherlands. Yachting gathered momentum, swept the English-speaking world, and soon caught on in North America, the outposts of the British Empire and Western Europe.
Like the sports of golf, soccer, rugby, skin-diving, surfing and skateboarding in the future, it was fresh and exciting. While yachting was largely Establishment, and followed the money and the clubbiness, there soon arose a lunatic fringe which insisted on indulging themselves in small, cheap boats and on having a good time on the water. These folk sailed the minimalist…
