On the Pacific coast, ... wherever there is a bay that will afford a harbor, and a town that will support people, the yacht is used as a vehicle of pleasure.... Many of the San Francisco boats are large schooners, a number are powerful sea-going sloops, while of smaller craft there is an abundance of almost every type, although the New York catboat and the flat-bottomed sharpie of Long Island Sound are seldom met with, and seem not to be in favor.... Pacific yachters appreciate the good points of the yawl, for the squalls which blow over the waters of the west coast are sudden and severe, and no rig meets these conditions of weather so well as does the yawl. [Illustration: DRAWN BY W. TABER FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY WALTER BLACKBURN. THE NEWPORT CATBOAT.] The most important and numerous yachting interest of the country, however, as would be expected, is along the northeastern seaboard, where, measured by numbers and the investment in boats, wharves, club-houses, and equipments generally, it surpasses any other district in the world. More than one hundred clubs exist between Maine and Philadelphia. The earliest form of yacht [as Mr. F. W. Pangborn reminds us in “The Century” for May, 1892] was, of course, a rowboat with a sail.... From the primitive sprit-sail pleasure-boat comes the ever-present and universally favored center-board catboat, a type of yacht which, for speed, handiness, and unsafeness, has never been surpassed. Keel catboats are also built, but the typical American “cat” is the center-board boat of light draft, big beam, and huge sail. The two objectionable points about boats of this class are their capsizability, and their bad habit of yawing when sailing before the wind. Yet the cat is the handiest light-weather boat made. It is very fast, quick in stays, and simple in rig; but it can never become a first-class seaworthy type of yacht. It belongs among the fair-weather pleasure-boats.... [Illustration: RIG OF THE YAWL.]