In the past, on BABC and also other boating forums I frequent I've seen threads on yacht clubs where some people think they're the greatest thing on the water and others wouldn't be part of a club for all the tea in China. Some boaters view clubs with disdain, thinking them to be a snooty bunch who own big yachts they drive with their captain's hat on their head, wearing their white slacks and blue blazers.

Our club is nothing like that. We're an average bunch of people who, for the most part, own medium size boats, have kids, and use their boats a lot. We just came out with our event calendar for 2020 and I must admit I was surprised by the variety and number of events. Here’s the rundown:

=Every Wednesday morning there’s a coffee klatch
=every Friday evening there’s a potluck BBQ that is always well attended
=this month there is a charter bus trip to Seattle to go to the boat show
=there are 9 parties scheduled
=next month there’s a crab feed with fresh crab from Seattle
=there are 2 mandatory work parties. You’re fined $250 if you don’t attend at least one
=there are 2 “Sip & Paint” for ladies only. They involve copious amounts of vino and each woman paints a picture
=there is a 4-day membership drive at our local boat show
=there are 7 scheduled cruises to out of town destinations.
=there is the Christmas Lighted Boat Parade, two nights, the first weekend in December.

Now lest you think the cruises are all the same, one of them is quite special. Our area has unlimited hydroplane races and airshow in July. On one of our cruises we host all the pilots on our boats for an evening cruise on the Columbia with snacks and beer provided. On the 2017 pilot’s cruise we were lucky enough to host the pilots and crew from the F22 Raptors that were in the airshow. While talking with the pilot of one of the two planes (call sign “Rock”) I talked him into letting us bring the grandsons out to the airport the following day and getting a personal tour of the planes. The planes were not on display for the general public but here’s the result:


So, what say you? Are you a member of a club? Have you ever been? What’s your impression of yacht clubs? Good or bad?

GFC

I would join your club ( or one like it) if I kept my boat on the water. Knotty Buoy lives on the trailer at home with us when not on the water. My wife and I are starting to think of retirement (10-15 years). I am working on convincing her that we need to do the Great American Loop. If we do that, we would plan on a 35-45 trawler type boat for that adventure, and beyond. Since that would be a touch long to be on a trailer at home, so we would need to find a home for her. There are a number of yacht clubs on the east side of MI that are easily accessible from the dirt home.

I have found your statement that folks are average, everyday Joes and Jills is accurate.We have been to a couple of yacht clubs over the years with friends and kept our 20 foot boat in marinas for vacations. We have had good experiences with our dock mates even when they have had significantly larger boats than us or the one we were on at the time. We have been invited on board a few for dinner or drinks after some dock side conversations.

GFC, I’ve seen a couple of your posts on some of the trawler sites in the course of my research. They are informative as always.

I would belong to one if it was possible to get reciprocity from other yacht clubs when out and about. There is one adjacent to and associaed with my marina, but they cannot handle the size of my boat and they don't have any reciprocity arrangements with any other clubs. There's not much value for those of us at the marina with "bigger" boats, so almost no one with a "bigger" boat has joined. For the most part, the members there have "smaller" boats and they like to hang out in the function room because there's not a lot of room to entertain on board their boats.

Dave, it might be to your benefit to become your club's Reciprocal Moorage manager. I do that for our club and it's a piece of cake. You join YachtDestinations.com and get registered with them. Then it's a matter of looking at the clubs in the areas you want to cruise to and send their Recip Manager the necessary forms. The forms are all on YD.com so all you need to do is request a moorage agreement "until cancelled".

We have recip moorage agreements with about 40 clubs, most in the lower end of the Columbia River, Puget Sound and up into Canada.

The yacht club by me has no moorings. Only docks for <31' boats and no transient slips.

Dave, might this present you with the opportunity to expand your cruising horizons?

Do you mean leaving my marina and mooring/docking somewhere else? If so, I'm not likely to do that, and for very good but complicated reasons. In order to be near family, I wish to keep my boat in northern New England in the Summer months. This limits me to ME, NH or MA. I live in NH and therefore did not have to pay sales tax on my boat. I also intend to maintain NH resident status after I sell my house to avoid paying state income tax. If I keep the boat in MA and ME, I have to pay "use tax" which is equivalent to sales tax and would be thousands of dollars (one time), AND I'd have to pay state income tax which would be thousands of dollars every year. So, being near family and keeping thousands of dollars in my pocket means I am stuck in NH. Not a bad place to be stuck, BTW, it's beautiful.

There are no yacht clubs in NH that can handle my boat and there are only three marinas with access to the coast that I can use.

https://wentworthmarina.com/ is quite fancy, quite expensive, and inconveniently located in an absurdly wealthy island town (need a car for any shopping because there is none on the island), but it's very close to the open ocean. It's definitely not for me unless I was a crew member on someone else's boat...

https://www.greatbaymarine.com/?gcl...WB4weD1Mda4EiCnhaazlSkde_NRoCVH0QAvD_BwE is reasonably priced, friendly, and nice, but very inconveniently located. You need a car for any kind of shopping or dining and the location requires motoring 8 nautical miles through extremely strong current to get to the open ocean. I considered staying there but could not get a slip or a mooring so it did not matter...

http://hamptonmarinanh.com/ This is where I keep my boat. It's super-friendly, a little rough around the edges, reasonably-priced and full of DIY-types, like me. It's walking distance to all kinds of great restaurants, stores and entertainment venues, and there's a huge shopping metropolis (including West Marine) a 5 minute car ride away. It's close enough to the open ocean that I can't even get my engines fully warmed up before there's nothing between my boat and Europe. It also happens to be <25 minutes drive from most of my immediate family. I thought being in the midst of the biggest tourist town in a state that has tourism as the number 1 industry would suck, but I love this place and eagerly signed up to keep my boat here next year.

Regardless of where we pay to keep our boat, we have a long history of boat exploration and will only expand on that. We put roughly 220 hours on the engines last year, spent at least 28 nights away from our slip, and had a ball. We are fortunate to be within an easy day's cruise of countless protected anchorages and interesting ports either north or south, and we can get to NYC or the Canada Maritimes in <3 easy days of cruising from our slip. We are blessed with spectacular cruising grounds right at our doorstep.

I hope I don't give the impression that I'm trying to avoid the social aspect of yacht clubs. My wife and I immediately became part of a close-knit social group from our "side" of the marina. The marine is very much divided into two sides and for whatever reason, there's not a lot of cross-socialization except for the folks that share the one common connected dock. Guessing it's simply a matter of never needing to walk on the other docks and it's not an unfriendly situation by any means. Anyway, we enjoy the social aspect with our marina neighbors very much and do hang out with them outside of boating season too. We went to dinner and a comedy show with 9 other couples from the marina last Saturday night, as a matter of fact. Had a great time.

Dave, no I wasn't suggesting you move the boat. Rather, I was suggesting that having a club membership and getting reciprocal moorage with other clubs in NE would give you new places to explore.

We've done that and if/when we do take this lengthy trip up into Canada we'll do quite a bit of that. The nice thing about recip moorage is you can go online and find out just about anything you want to know about a particular club's facilities through the website YachtDestinations .com.

We've stayed at 3 clubs on the Columbia in the Portland area. One seemed a bit snooty, the other two are more down to earth. I don't think I'd belong to the first one and don't know enough about the other two to say if we'd join or not. Another nice thing about the club membership is any of them that sell fuel generally are cheaper than the local market price.

Our club sells premium gas at about $.10 below the street price for regular unleaded and their diesel is about $.45 below street diesel.

I sent emails to the only two real yacht clubs in NH. Both have membership size limit and both require that two club members sponsor a prospective member. We'll see how it goes.

Keep us posted. I guess your comment about needing two members as sponsors struck me as odd. What if you're new to an area and don't know anyone who is currently a member of that club?

We don't have that restriction. Hell, if they let me in they'll let in just about anyone.

This is a nice resource for a listing of clubs, their services and what not-


https://www.ycaol.com/regorders.html

Not sure I’d buy it unless I planning a cruise.

Reciprocity can be a funny thing. Some Are pretty loose with the rules, some require communication from your home club, some Will bill your home club for any services you get, some require payment at the time of services rendered. So do your homework.

Lots of old money around here, the rules might be a legacy of that. I made it clear in my emails that I do not know anyone in the club and am looking for guidance on how to proceed. If a response is welcoming and helpful, it's a club I'd consider. If a response never comes, or is condescending or unhelpful, it's a club I would not want to join regardless. I'm curious to see what happens. I will not be jumping through hoops to join any club...

While we are not members of a yacht club per se, we are members of the Marine Trawler Owners Association (MTOA) that is a nationwide organization of folks who like to go places on their boats. While many of the members have trawlers, there are a significant number who have faster boats. This is an active group and there are also regional groups that often have activities and cruises that you can join in. We boat on the Chesapeake Bay and there are two groups here, one of which we participate in when we have time. So far, the folks we have met have been welcoming and fun to be with!

The MTOA is a member of the Yachting Club of America who's members generally offer reciprocity, and the MTOA also has partner marinas that offer discounts on transient slips and fuel. We have only used the fuel discount and none of the marina discounts at this point, but expect that to change as we are able to cruise longer distances.

There are additional benefits of being a member of the MTOA that include a boat insurance program, port captains who are available to provide local knowledge and assistance, and an email listserver that people use like a forum.

Both clubs responded. One has a 37 person waiting list and requires being sponsored by two members that have known me for at least two years. The other has no waiting list and the Commodore said come one down and meet him and he'd be happy to sponsor me and would find someone else who would too.

Guess which club I will be visiting.

Seems like a tough call

The one with the waiting list probably requires a uniform and proper flag etiquette as well!

Years ago, we rented a slip in a rather dumpy marina. They had a casual and friendly yacht club - no clubhouse, other than a picnic table. Lots of fun, fish boils and raft ups mostly. Very friendly people. We joined for a year or two and had a number of good times.

We own our current slip (it is a condo type of thing), and our HOA is basically a yacht club (member of AYC). We have a club house with shower facilities, 3 bars (1 indoors, 2 outdoors), pool, and a fire pit. There are several parties each year, but no raft up or cruises events. To be honest, the dumpy yacht club with the picnic table was much more fun.

We also are members of the AYC, which has reciprocity with our marina. Tried to use the AYC reciprocity once when visiting Door County, WI, but no joy. Oh well.

By way of an update, yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday,. We had a SB party at the club attended by about 50 people. There was a chili cookoff contest with 12 entries, 3 game boards (I won $20) a long table with chili fixin's and assorted other munchies. We have 3 large TV's and tons of seating so everyone who wanted to watch the game had a TV to choose.

I wasn't too interested in the game so I spent about half the time watching the game and the other half wandering around talking with friends. Seems that not many were super interested in the game but everyone there was glad the Chiefs won.

We left about 45 minutes after the game ended and had a great time.

Interesting reading. I am a member of a yacht club on a freshwater lake. The term "yacht" makes people think we are all rich. Really none of us are. Many of us would rank in the lower middle class income wise.
We all love boating, have social events and a great time both on the water and on the docks.