How far under the present rating rule beam may yet be increased with advantage to speed is still matter for debate and experiment. Personally I am inclined to think we have pretty nearly approached the limit. But of this much I am confident, that we have long ago exceeded the limit where beam improves a yacht as a comfortable sea-going craft, and that we should have a much more wholesome and useful vessel for all purposes, except possibly for international racing, with somewhat less beam and somewhat more displacement.
The diagram given ante may serve to give the reader an idea of the influence that the various tonnage or rating rules have had on the proportions and form of yachts.
British Yachts, 1893
| Name | Length on L.W.L. | Breadth ext. | Y.R.A. sail area | Length over all | Draft | Y.R.A. rating |
| feet | feet | square feet | feet | feet | ||
| Satanita | 97.7 | 24.70 | 09,923 | 131.00 | 16.5 | 161.58 |
| Britannia | 87.8 | 23.66 | 10,328 | 121.50 | 15.0 | 151.13 |
| Valkyrie | 86.8 | 22.33 | 10,271 | 117.25 | 16.3 | 148.58 |
| Calluna | 82.0 | 24.30 | 10,305 | — | 15.0 | 140.83 |
American Yachts, 1893
| Name | Length on L.W.L. | Breadth ext. | Y.R.A. sail area | Length over all | Draft | Y.R.A. rating |
| feet | feet | square feet | feet | feet | ||
| Navahoe, C.B. | 86.93 | 23.00 | 10,815 | 128 | 13.0 | 156.7 |
| Vigilant, C.B. | 86.19 | 26.25 | 12,330 | 124 | 14.0 | 178.0 |
| Colonia, K. | 85.00 | 24.00 | — | 124 | 14.0 | — |
| Jubilee, C.B. and Fin | 84.00 | 22.50 | — | 123 | 16.0 | — |
| Pilgrim, K. | 85.00 | 23.00 | — | 122 | 22.0 | — |
But an entirely false impression has been conveyed should it be understood that the only advance made in yacht designing was due to more or less ingenious methods of evading the existing measurement rule; and it will be sufficient if the fact has been impressed, that a designer is as unlikely to make a successful vessel if he ignores the measurement under which the yacht is to race as by failing to recognise those laws of nature which govern the stability of bodies in water and their resistance in passing through it.
What has to be done by the yacht designer, besides getting the very utmost out of the tonnage rule, has never been more happily put than by Lord Dunraven in an article on International Yachting, from which I venture to quote:—
How most successfully to drive a body through the water by the means of the motive power of the wind acting upon the sails, is the question that puzzles men and turns them grey-headed before Nature should have thinned or whitened their locks. The designer has not merely to discover the form of solid body which, at various rates of speed, will excite the smallest degree of resistance in passing through the water, for the body is not solid, it is hollow. It must have buoyancy, and suitable accommodation for all the living and dead freight on board. It must possess stability, real and acquired; that is, natural by means of breadth, and artificial by means of ballast, if the expressions are allowable. It does not proceed on a level keel or at any uniform angle, but at angles varying at every moment, and the contour of the body must be adapted to these various angles. Neither does the wind exert its force upon it from a fixed direction, nor propel it through water uniformly smooth or constantly rough. On the contrary, the propelling power strikes from various angles on the surface of the sails; and the sea, as we all know—and some of us to our cost—has a reprehensible habit of becoming, on the shortest notice, agitated in the most disagreeable manner.
Every point of sailing suggests an appropriate and different form of hull. The shape that is well adapted for one kind of weather is ill adapted for another sort; vessels that move as by magic in light airs may be of little use in a whole sail breeze; one that is by no means a flier in smooth water may be very hard to beat in a sea-way. In short, a vessel must be light enough to be driven easily by a moderate breeze, stiff enough to stand up to her canvas in a hard wind, shallow enough to be docked with ease and to run with speed. She must have depth enough to hold her up to windward, breadth enough to give her stability; she should be long enough to reach well, and short enough to turn well to windward; low in the water so as not to hold too much wind, with plenty of freeboard to keep the sea off her decks. The satisfaction of any one requirement necessitates something antagonistic to some other requirement equally clamorous for satisfaction. Your vessel, to be perfect, must be light, of small displacement, and with the centre of gravity brought very low; she must also have large displacement, and the ballast must not be too low, in order that she may be easy in a sea-way; she must be broad, narrow, long, short, deep, shallow, tender, stiff. She must be self-contradictory in every part. A sailing ship is a bundle of compromises, and the cleverest constructor is he who, out of a mass of hostile parts, succeeds in creating the most harmonious whole. It is not strange that designers pass sleepless nights, and that anything like finality and perfection of type is impossible to conceive. No wonder that yacht designing is a pursuit of absorbing interest.