The Golden Age of Yachting was not confined to the rich. There was a much larger group, which took up the new sport of dinghy sailing, among whom were a significant number of women sailors.

Lubbock's Bank Holiday Act, 1870, and the release of Saturday afternoons from work, allowed aquatic leisure activities to spread to the lower middle classes during and after the 1870s; and ‘by the turn of the century even the poor came to assume that they had a right to leisure’.

Cruising, in whatever size boat, has always been much more popular than racing. In the San Francisco Call, 22 May, 1904, there is an article on ‘Ladies of High Station Who Love the Sea’. It starts by telling the reader that good women sailors are far more frequent among ‘British sisters’ than among American women. Three outstanding helmswomen are mentioned, but over twenty who enjoy cruising (these being high class ladies, they have crew).

Unfortunately for the historian, it is hard to get a handle on yacht cruising. The tens of thousands who packed a hamper and sailed with friends and/ or family a couple of miles down the river to their favourite picnic spot are unrecorded, and since they had no reason to join a yacht club, even assuming they would have been acceptable, there is even less record of their existence.

To cater for the needs of the cruising man, E. F. Knight, along with Claud Worth and his regular crewman, H. J. Hanson, created the Cruising Association in 1908, to counter the snobbishness and exclusiveness of the Royal Cruising Club. The Association, whose purpose was and is to offer support to the cruising yachtsman created a network of Boatmen, carefully selected and supervised by the Honorary Local Representative, who would go off to meet any incoming vessel flying the Association burgee.

On the Clyde, the Clyde Cruising Club was formed on a November night in 1909, when four young men, standing on the starboard paddle box of the Duchess of Montrose heading for Wemyss Bay (on the mainland) from Rothesay (the Isle of Bute, and a major yachting haven) agreed to set up a club for the cruising man.