Burgee versus pennant
The Stitched Sailor crew · 2026-08-14 · 4 min read
A burgee is a yacht club flag. Traditionally triangular or swallow-tailed, it identifies the club a boat belongs to rather than the boat herself, and it flies from the bow staff or the masthead. That is the strict meaning and the one anyone at a club will use.
A pennant, strictly, is just a tapering flag. Every burgee is a pennant by shape; not every pennant is a burgee by function. In common use, especially ashore, pennant has come to mean the felt tapered wall piece that hangs in an office or over a bar, which is how one word ended up attached to two quite different objects.
Ours are named for what they actually are. The Burgee Pennant is the felt wall piece in the classic tapered shape, printed edge to edge and bound along the hoist. It is made to hang, not to fly. It is the one mates buy for the office, the dock house, or a kid who has decided the boat belongs to them.
The Boat Flag is the rectangular one, knitted polyester that will not crease or shrink, with two iron grommets set along the hoist so it hangs flat and square. It is printed on one side with the reverse left blank, which is worth knowing before you plan to hang it somewhere it will be seen from both sides.
If what you actually want is a true club burgee to fly from the bow, that is a different object with dimensions the club sets, and we would rather talk to you about a one-off than sell you the wall version and let you discover the difference when it arrives.
Both carry your boat printed edge to edge rather than a badge dropped on a blank field, and both are sublimated, so the colour is in the cloth and will not crack along a fold.