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The use of the yacht as a pleasure boat began with Charles II of Britain, as is mentioned in the introduction to this article. The origin of pleasure-boating, including royal pleasure-boating, is lost in prehistory. Many ancient monarchs are said by the sources to have had pleasure boats, some quite spectacular. Before Charles II the Jachtschip was a pursuit ship used by the Dutch to overtake pirates. Charles' preference for a vessel of this type for his return combined with his later patronage of pleasure-boating gave the sport the specific cast that we call "yachting."

Yachting for pleasure was formerly the province of the wealthy due to expense and the manpower required (because the boats were big), but today has become the pastime of many worldwide. King Charles II of England is mentioned as enjoying the sport in the diaries of Samuel Pepys. In Britain, the sport of yachting became widely popular in the late Victorian (1837-1901) period. Queen Victoria and her family maintained a fleet of sail- and steam-yachts at her residence on the Isle of Wight. The town of Cowes on the island is still seen by many as the world home of yachting, hosting the famous Cowes Week sailing festival in the summer. Like most other yachting festivals, this consists mainly of organised yacht racing by both dedicated racing yachts and a series of 'class' events catering for the wide variety of non-dedicated yachts.

Until the 1950s almost all yachts were made of wooden boards, or in a larger yacht, steel but nowadays there is a much wider range of materials. Most common is fibreglass, but steel, aluminium and much less often because of insurance difficulties, ferrocement are used as well. Wood is still used (traditional board based methods as well as modern technologies based on plywood, veneers and epoxy-glues etc.) but wood is mostly used when building an individual boat by a hobbyist or wooden boat purist. At the other extreme, high performance yachts such as those used in the Volvo Ocean Race and the America's Cup are often constructed from Carbon Fibre.

Modern yachts have efficient sail-plans that allow them to sail into the wind. This capability is the result of a sail plan and hull design (typically a sloop rig) that utilizes Bernoulli's principle to generate lift.

Bernoulli's Principle states that in an ideal fluid (low speed air is a good approximation), with no work being performed on the fluid, an increase in velocity occurs simultaneously with decrease in pressure or gravitational energy.

This principle is a simplification of Bernoulli's equation, which states that the sum of all forms of energy in a fluid flowing along an enclosed path (a streamline) is the same at any two points in that path.