yacht clubs

[Laundryman]

I have never joined a club of any sort but wonder whether i am missing out on something.
Sailing is my only hobby, I live in Hemel Hempstead but my boat is in Gosport. I would like to know why you are a member of a yacht club, what being a member does for you and really any advice for or against. Thank you Alan

 

[WF36]

"Yacht clubs are full of old men looking into pint glasses telling lies"

 

[Laundryman]

Ouch!

 

[reginaldon]

"Yacht clubs are full of old men looking into pint glasses telling lies"

Not in ours, tho' we are a yacht and motor boat club, I was put off for years by my prejudices, but no Ya Yas , few drinkers but a bunch of of guys and guyesses that are mutually helpful- even to an octogenarian!

 

[boatingboater]

"Yacht clubs are full of old men looking into pint glasses telling lies"

 

[ianat182]

Joining a club means that you are a mixing sort of person,not afraid to assist in club selfhelp organised tasks around the club which helps keep the annual subscription to an affordable level. That you are supportive of club projects and contribute to them in labour or serving on the appropriate committee/working party. That you attend organised club rallies or cruises cross channel ,in company, or local racing or club pursuits.
Many clubs like my own have a very active young persons training and social groups,where parents do duties as required to keep family interested in sailing both at dinghy and yacht levels.
Our Club of 1500 memebers have only 3 paid staff, bar duties are organised and rotas compiled to suit member's needs. Annual Regattas sponsored by commercial interests are money brought into the club coffers, and the level of expertise provided by 100 or so club volunteers ensures future sponsorship is encouraged to continue their support.
Facilities provided by our club include club mooring, boat and dinghy storage and discounted laying -up facilities at a local boatyard; a club launch for use by members (at a nominal annual charge)to use for boat inspection loading etc.Dinghy and sailboat launching at all states of tide from a pontoon or jetty.
A large hall and set of rooms that can be hired for weddings or small functions and where lectures and racing results are displayed on large screen TV.

All clubs will have a joining fee plus the same amount annual subscription in the first year,and this may be a probationary membership initially;some also have a 'social memnbership' that use and support the bar and food facilities,our club has neither of the latter two conditions.

Festive and midsummer functions are always well attended and guests always welcomed. ( and signed in).
We have a club administrator who will answer membership and other questions, and a Secretary and Treasurer to keep the club well afloat for monetary and organisational requirements, backed by an Executive committee and Trustees.

So, with all this why not join a club,many of us do - and 42 years for me!

 

[Ripster]

Most clubs will allow you sign in as a visitor a few times and are happy to talk you through the facilities and how the club runs. Once you join one, most other clubs welcome you in as a visiting member from another club - again, there is usually a limit on the amount of times a visitor can sign in.

 

[wotayottie]

I'm a member of four yacht clubs so you could conclude that I am a "clubby" sort of chap.

What do I get out of it? Friendship, social life, help with the boat when needed, crew when needed, way cheaper moorings and in my early years it was a learning environment sailing wise. I do a bit of club racing and the occasional club cruise. Even the club trip on a chara to the boat show.

I'ce been comadore of two of them, training officer for three, treasurer for one and on the committee at times. As long as you dont take yourself too seriously, these are fun jobs rather than chores.

TBH I cannot imagine the soullessness of just parking my boat in an MDL marina, knowing few if any of the other boat owners and sailing away on my own. Must be miserable.

 

[dedwards]

As you live so far inland the main benefits of a club to you are:

An organised rally schedule where you get to socialise with friends at your sailing destination.

The possibility of meeting people who would like to crew on your boat or vice versa (eg they may be entering their boat in the round island race).

A shoreside private bar/restaurant that you can visit after your sail to chat with people about sailing.

The chance of (eventually) getting a cheap club mooring


You can normally judge the club by how much it charges to join. The cheaper it is the more down to earth the club will be. I think the nearest club to gosport is Hardway and they are very friendly and down to earth.

 

[Charlotte Anne]

I can imagine being a member of the YC but not owning a yacht, i cannot imagine owning the yacht and not being members of a club. We use ours to keep dinghies, both sailing and rowing, for childrens sailing (RYA OnBoard etc), for feeding them when we cannot be bothered, as a playground and social gathering point as our houses are all too small to have more than two families in them... and we get a cheap mooring.

I guess if your yachting is all longer trips and you just want to turn up, load up and sail away then there is arguably no need to be a member of a club.

 

[MoodySabre]

Officers, committees, politics, ties and blazers. No club for me.

Friends and bonhommie, all the help you could ever want, no officers, no rules. The East Coast Forum does it for me.

I came to sailing late but I do have much regard for those who give their time teaching youngsters to sail.

 

[johnalison]

Not all of us have a wide range of friends who sail and when I lived in Hertfordshire we found that belonging to a club in Essex greatly increased our exposure to the sailing life. Although we had made sailing friends when messing around with our children on the boat, we immediately gained another 120. This led us to many years of keen but unthreatening racing, which increased our skills and gave us confidence to extend our cruising. Winter talks and teaching, as well as some splendid meals added to the experience and we still cruise in company with some of the people we raced against 35 years ago.

Of a wide range of clubs, very few insist on the kind of formalities that non-clubbers usually affect to despise. Even in the successful but modest club that we mainly attend these days, there are codes of behaviour both on and off the water that are the natural property of decent folk everywhere and I see sailors around who would benefit from exposure to these mostly humble gentlemen and ladies.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

For several reasons, I've not seen any point in being a member of a club:

1. I'm not interested in racing, which seems to be the main activity of most clubs.
2. I can't make regular events; I live 400 miles away.
3. I might be interested in a club berthing arrangement, but I am not aware of any where I sail, at least not ones that offer sufficient security (400 miles away, remember, so moorings don't cut it?)
4. I go sailing to get away from it all - getting involved in committees etc. does NOT tempt me.
5. I do plenty of other sociable things!

If I were to join a club, it would be the RYA or the Cruising Club; they are both campaigning bodies that I probably should support.

 

[maby]

We have been members of a large club in Kent, but did not bother to renew last year.

We were initially forced to join the club since we bought a boat from a member that was hauled out in the boat park and in need of work before it could be launched. Continued use of the boat park was dependent on club membership, so we joined. While we were working on it, membership was very useful since it gave us access to both the club house for food and washing and also access to a large resource of knowledge from other members and the resident engineer. We also took advantage of some of the social events organised, but we are not really party animals, so this was of less importance.

The club does have moorings available for members and we could have taken advantage of them, but we wanted the facilities of a marina and took out an annual contract with the local marina. Once we got the boat across there, we found that we were making far less use of the club facilities and eventually decided to cancel our membership. It was costing us several hundred pounds each year and we were only visiting the club house a few times each year for a beer - a quick calculation indicated that each beer was costing around thirty pounds! The marina has a pretty good social life even though it does not have a club house - we just get together with a few friends on somone's boat and bring a bottle.

I think it would be good for clubs to have more grades of membership. We were only interested in the social aspects (i.e. access to the club house), but were paying the same membership fees as a highly active member using all the practical facilities, keeping our boat on a club trot buoy, making use of the water taxi and taking part in races every week. The standard membership fee of several hundred pounds per year was just too expensive to justify - I would happily pay a fee of around £50 per annum for "social membership" which would be £50 that they are not currently receiving quite apart from the profit on food and drinks that we would buy.

 

[Seajet]

Laundryman,

I'll give what I hope is a frank and honest answer, as you ask a good question.

For a start, a lot of clubs including mine were formed by Naval Officers just after WWII, getting together in rooms at pubs and hoping for better times after the horrors they'd been through...

That's very commendable, but I can't help wondering if things have moved on.

My club is ostensibly friendly, and is a volunteers only, no paid staff set-up, which generally works well, and despite low fees we have a nice clubhouse.

The thing I get out of it is a cheap mooring ( which I laid and maintain myself ). I joined in about 1976, before that had trailer sailed a Caricraft dinghy.

The negative side is the cliquiness, invariably from people who couldn't sail out of a wet paper bag but who seek to influence everyone elses' sailing by one means or another, it's an amusing pastime just reading what title these people award themselves, " Rear Admiral, Admin " is just one treasure I came across, I'm sure the next will be ' Grand Admiral, Safety Hat Dispenser ' - and of course committee members get different coloured safety hats for launching days...

While I've been in the club longer than the committee's combined years, I've always steered clear of the politics and tried to get on with sailing.

I'm quite a shy person, and the bar has very limited opening times, so nowadays I hardly recognise anyone, though of course one helps people move dinghies etc.

It does upset me though that long standing members - friends - who have given a lot to the club in a quiet way get no recognition as 'they're not on the committee', and of the hard core locals no-one looks out for even their boat in gales, let alone anyone elses.

When the security webcams were upgraded recently I suggested making these available to inland members like me, as it would give the chance to see if my and my chums' boats are OK, and could boost security, maybe with a rota watchkeeper system.

That idea was immediately shot down, only committee members can have the 'power' to see the webcams !

I have discussed this with friends, and we all agree we'd be off to a local marina like a shot if we could afford it.

It's very apparent that no new young members are joining the cruiser section, and the cruiser members' average age is shooting up, so things like volunteer work on moorings is becoming impractical if not downright dangerous.

Clubs have had their day, and internal politics is their death-knell.

Yours,

Starfleet Command Admiral, High Seas Fleet, With Brass knobs on, No Returns .

 

[PhilipF]

TBH I cannot imagine the soullessness of just parking my boat in an MDL marina, knowing few if any of the other boat owners and sailing away on my own. Must be miserable.

Certainly Not. We've been in two MDL's, the majority of the berth-holders are really friendly and helpful - and the staff try really hard too. Fact I think MDL may have changed policy lately to try to give their marinas a more social atmosphere, by organising events etc.

 

[wotayottie]

Laundryman,


Clubs have had their day, and internal politics is their death-knell.

Yours,

Starfleet Command Admiral, High Seas Fleet, With Brass knobs on, No Returns .

Sounds apalling Seajet, but dont tell others or convince yourself that the club you describe is typical or even common. It isnt. I had a spell as chairman of our regional sailing association ie club of clubs, and I travelled round to all of them. Maybe twenty clubs in total. Not one was remotely like the disfunctional set up you describe.

What are you doing about your club? Are you getting involved to put it right?

 

[maxi77]

Officers, committees, politics, ties and blazers. No club for me.

Friends and bonhommie, all the help you could ever want, no officers, no rules. The East Coast Forum does it for me.

I came to sailing late but I do have much regard for those who give their time teaching youngsters to sail.

The problem is that things like training and facilities need organisation, but in most cases no ties or blazers. It can be amazing the return in freinds bonhommie help and advice that you get from taking part in a sailing club. All you need to do is join a place full of people like yourself, you really don't know what you are missing

 

[maby]

Certainly Not. We've been in two MDL's, the majority of the berth-holders are really friendly and helpful - and the staff try really hard too. Fact I think MDL may have changed policy lately to try to give their marinas a more social atmosphere, by organising events etc.

I'll second that - we are MDL residents and the social atmosphere is very good.

 

[CliveG]

The East Coast Forum does it for me.
No rules.
No Committee.
No membership fees.
Over 80 boats declared as non members
Regular informal meetings.
Normally over 40 people attend any meal our organised.
No club house to be maintained - loads of pubs to meet in.

On our 2 week trip in early June we met ECF people in each port we visited, all unplanned meetings .

Sink you boat on a Wednesday, 18 people turn up to help clean her up on the Saturday.
You could not ask for more.