Five good reasons to join a yacht club

                One of the San Francisco Bay area's 100 yacht clubs

It matters not whether your boat is a mega yacht or a canoe, you will have more fun with it if you join a yacht club. There are more than 100 yacht clubs in the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Delta system. You surely can find one to match your interests.

Here are five reasons why joining a yacht club can enhance your boating experience, not in any order of importance. What is most important to one person may not be as important to you. But in one way or another, all five apply.

1. It enlarges your world. By belonging to a yacht club you gain friends and opportunities for sporting and social activities that widen and enrich your life. Though most members have boats, and some require it, is not unusual for a yacht club to have members who have no boat at all, but who like to be around people who do, for the stories they tell, and for the group activities, such as travel charters, the clubs organize. Boaters are more adventurous and intrepid than most other folks. Maybe it rubs off.

2. Cruising. Most yacht clubs have what they call “Cruise outs” 5 to 10 times during the year. Cruise outs are visits by a fleet of club boats to other yacht clubs in the Bay Area, a fun way to visit other sailing areas with congenial people. For every cruise “out” there is a cruise “in”, when fleets of boaters from other clubs come visiting. It’s a chance to swap tales with fresh ears. In addition to home water cruises, many clubs organize bare boat charter cruises for groups of members to the best cruising areas of the world: the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Mexico, and the Mediterranean. As one veteran cruise puts it, “It’s a fabulous way to travel.”

3. Racing. You must belong to a yacht club to participate in organized sailboat racing under the auspices of the Pacific Inter-Club Yacht Association. Although sailing races are the most visible racing activities on the Bay, most clubs also have power boat races such as poker runs and over-the-bottom regattas. Some clubs have their own racing programs, perhaps on Tuesday or Friday nights, and during the winter when the PICYA season is over. One club hosted a contest using Geocaches reachable only by water. Crews are always needed, so skippers always are on the lookout for handy hands.

4. Reciprocity. As a member of a yacht club, you have guest privileges at all yacht clubs everywhere in the world that have reciprocity agreements with yours. That gives you friends in every port to contact for advice whenever you travel, on land or water.

5. Youth Programs. Many yacht clubs have programs for young people that teach sailing and seamanship, and, through those activities, leadership. Your own kids and grandkids benefit from those programs, and so do many from disadvantaged homes who are sponsored by the clubs.

Most people have more than enough things to do. Adding the activities of a yacht club membership might seem easy to put aside under the pressures of work and family. You may consider your boat expensive enough without adding the overhead of a yacht club, Only you can decide whether a yacht club membership has enough value to justify the time and cost. For most boaters, and hopeful boaters, it does.

When you are ready, ask a friend who is a member to sponsor you. If you do not know anyone that is a member, contact the membership chair. Every club has one.   Karin Knowles, Membership Chair of the Richmond Yacht Club, says that her standard response to a person who doesn't know any RYC members is to refer the prospective member to the committee that runs RYC regattas so the prospect can volunteer to provide race support.  "Volunteering is a great way to make contacts and show a real interest in membership," she says.  For a list of yacht clubs in the Bay Area, click here.