The buyer was Charles E. Miller, a well-known San Francisco yachtsman and member of the Bohemian Club. Miller was a colorful, gregarious figure who loved entertaining friends aboard his boats. He once described Yankee as “the sweetest sailing boat he had ever owned.”

Miller raced Yankee extensively, competing in the Universal Rule Class N against yachts including Nixie, Pronto II, Presto, Fulton G., Alert, Mah Pe, and Westward. He also cruised her to Catalina Island and back almost every winter, all without an engine. In 1910 Yankee won the John Hammersmith Trophy at the Corinthian Yacht Club, and in 1912 she had the fastest time in the Hammersmith race but lost on handicap.

It was Miller who transformed Yankee from sloop to schooner. Sometime in the middle 1910s — the precise date varies across sources — he added a foremast, converting the rig to the gaff schooner configuration she carries today. At the same time he removed the centerboard, filling the trunk with concrete, and installed a gasoline engine offset to port. These modifications made Yankee more suited to cruising, though they came at the cost of the centerboard’s windward advantage. (See Appendices for fact-check notes on the conversion date.)

Under Miller’s ownership, Yankee won the inaugural San Francisco Lipton Cup, donated in connection with the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition. That Exposition was itself a pivotal event in the transformation of Yankee’s birthplace: the grand fairgrounds were built on the filled-in tidal flats of Harbor View, the very site where Frank Stone’s yard had stood. When the Exposition closed, the reclaimed land became the Marina District — and eventually the location of the St. Francis Yacht Club.

In 1914, a six-year-old boy named Dennis Jordan sailed aboard Yankee with his parents. He would later become a Commodore of the St. Francis Yacht Club.

Around 1923, Yankee had a brief career in Hollywood. She was chartered to Goldwyn Studios to appear in the silent film Wild Oranges, directed by King Vidor. The Yankee crew, examining the film years later, identified the vessel’s distinctive cockpit, rigging, and hull lines. (See Chapter X on Hollywood Cameos.)

By the mid-1920s, Miller was no longer using Yankee. She sat mothballed in the San Rafael Canal, north of San Francisco, with her spars and sails in storage — waiting for the next chapter.