my rant..why are there no young people.

To me, every marina is a little bit of a club. And every marina has it's own culture. Yacht clubs often seem to be more about what's on land than the water.

We belong to a yacht club for tennis and for reciprocal agreements. However, I must say ours is quite family oriented. There is an extremely active junior sailing program and training starting with kids as young as 5. Also youth tennis and on Friday nights a Kid's Corner as a place for kids while parents socialize. And this is an older club, founded in 1938.

90% of the yacht clubs we've visited have been very friendly. In 10% transients are allowed but not embraced, considered a bit of an intrusion by some. I understand and am not bothered by that.

We're really not club types, too independent. Plus our boating isn't confined to any area. However, we have not run across circumstances that we would identify as not welcoming because of age. There are some that are big cliques and are difficult for any newcomer. If you're younger it may seem though like an age thing simply because they're older. We were at one club and an 84 year old man there told us, "Just ignore those two. They don't like anyone who doesn't live on the island. I've been coming here 20 years and they still don't like me coming. They're just cranky old men."

Back to the original post, Yacht Clubs are usually mini democracies and each one has its + and - points. When anyone joins a club it does not take long to determine who the jerks are. Every club is different and perhaps until you find a club suitable to you and your family, take your boat to a Marina...not a Yacht Club. I like what Groucho Marx said (hope I'm not dating myself here),
"PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER". My unsolicited advice...Old or Young....a$$ holes exist at any age. If you don't like the flavor at this club, then move on as you have. I do agree that the average age of the "Yacht Club" set is getting older but so are you! Hang in there and you will be an Old Yachtie one day. Regards, Slowpoke

Lest anyone think this is becoming an elder-bash, we've been members of a club in Tennessee since the early 90s and some of the nicest, most welcoming people we know are many of the senior members. Like Slowpoke says, a$$holes happen in pretty much any demographic group you can name.

We belong to a club, Miles River Yacht. Everyone is nice and having a slip there is great. While I could nag about the french fries or sone silly rule or the other, it is a good experience and we have made many new friends. I think, being younger, that the reason the clubs seem geared to older is that older generally have more free time to do club activities. We don't because of work and boating in free time. The amount of volunteer work that these older members put in is staggering. I highly recommend the yacht club experience.


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Need pics of young wife....

Lol


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We get between 30 and 40 new members every year to keep up our max of 600 members. We have a new member reception to welcome them in and learn what they are interested in boatingwise. After the meeting, the various committee chairs contact them and see about getting them involved. Invariably, the new members come up with an excuse for inactivity. As Predicted Log chair, I always get "I have to get the boat ready." The other chairs get similar excuses to not participate. What happens is that it's the "usual suspects" that run the club, not by choice, but necessity.

We're about the same size and your description of what happens is same. Not everyone who joins has time to help run the club.


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Happy Thought said:

We're about the same size and you description of what happens is same. Not everyone who joins has time to help run the club.


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And some of us just don't want to. For me part of the pleasure of boating is not running a business at that moment. I have no desire to be in charge of anything at a yacht club. Plus we're gone 2/3 of the time. So more power to those running things and petty arguments over things going on at the club are not something I'll get into. There apparently are some factions that battle occasionally but we don't even know who is on each side or what the battles are. Ignorance is bliss in this situation.

Billylll said:

Ghost, welcome are you the same Ghost from BE?
I agree with you as well.
Well stated...
Bill

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Channeling my best Bugs Bunny..."aaaaaaay could-be"

If you thought the guy from BE had something to contribute, then yes. If no, then I've never heard of the guy, must be some kind of coincidence.

angus99 said:

Ron, you're making a lot of assumptions. How you can say they are partly to blame because they decided to leave is frankly ridiculous. I know Eric personally, have been to the YC in question and trust his description of the event.

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Unfortunately, I don't know your friend personally and I don't know anything about the club. All I have to base my responses on is what he posted. I believe I have the right to post my opinion even if some other people don't agree with it.

rwidman said:

Unfortunately, I don't know your friend personally and I don't know anything about the club. All I have to base my responses on is what he posted. I believe I have the right to post my opinion even if some other people don't agree with it.

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It certainly would have helped if the OP had given more information on the actual conflict in terms of whether it seemed to be an age thing. Also just to have heard what the older man was reacting or over-reacting to. What was being said at the time of touching could put the touch in perspective. He presented a situation as an example of age issues he was asking about, yet really didn't say why he considered it an age issue as opposed to just a cranky old man who went too far.

Apparently it was done in such a manner as to cause him great distress so there must have been much more there than he shared with us. As my wife expressed we haven't experienced an age problem but that by no means one doesn't exist. We each can only relate to our own experiences. Similarly, we would each handle the same situation differently.

hey if you try really hard enough...you can get someone screaming and poking their finger in you or the other way around...say the right things, and you may get someone to gently reach out with a single finger and touch someone (still very wrong) and scream bloody murder.

If it invokes a punch..like someone already posted on here...the puncher will probably be taking the ride in the police car.

....

Throw in some alcohol and things get rocking real easy.

I have no idea what happened...and don't really care because I have no horse in the race.

I will admit the best advice was turn to friends for the ultimate answer...but there's also some good tidbits here in these posts...especially the one that says there's a pretty good chance that if you throw a punch...you'll get your butt handed to you.

But figuring out who was right or wrong????...I hope any jury that hears any case I'm involved in gets a lot more facts thrown at them than what I have seen here so far.

psneeld said:

hey if you try really hard enough...you can get someone screaming and poking their finger in you or the other way around...say the right things, and you may get someone to gently reach out with a single finger and touch someone (still very wrong) and scream bloody murder.

If it invokes a punch..like someone already posted on here...the puncher will probably be taking the ride in the police car.

....hey I've seen wankers in this forum get peoples blood boiling into threats if they ever meet up...pissing someone off isn't that much of a challenge if you really want to.

Throw in some alcohol and things get rocking real easy.

I have no idea what happened...and don't really care because I have no horse in the race.

I will admit the best advice was turn to friends for the ultimate answer...but there's also some good tidbits here in these posts...especially the one that says there's a pretty good chance that if you throw a punch...you'll get your butt handed to you.

But figuring out who was right or wrong????...I hope any jury that hears any case I'm involved in gets a lot more facts thrown at them than what I have seen here so far.

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Wifey B: Yeah, how many times on cops have we seen domestics. And it would be like, well she started it by pushing me. Then cop asks do you have any marks and answer is no. Well, she has marks so law says I must arrest you. Man screams complaining it's just not fair. Now domestic does have a whole different set of rules but sometimes as much as we want to react, as justified as we think it is, the smart money is on not retaliating.

Just like sports. Watch basketball. The one who retaliates always gets caught.

My hubby's impulse is to jump in to defend poor little me. But he's learned, I can handle myself in most situations and I'll let him know or it will become obvious if he's needed. Generally I just don't want to escalate an already bad situation.

And I'm still not flipping out over a finger touch to the shoulder. Maybe if I knew what preceded that I might. But I doubt it. I'm not going to let some (probably drunk) bully get to me.

And not going to fight the wankers in here either. And I'm not going to get pissed off over some words on a trawler forum. For real, just saying.

ghost said:

I think some of you are fooling yourselves as to trying to freshen up old clubs. It can't be done because the memberships don't really want it. Yes, they all talk about wanting to attract younger members, they are well aware of their own reputations. But its window dressing only. I liken it to car clubs where nobody has built a car in 20 years, they just want the repeat recognition from last year. The yacht club parallel is not that far off.

What they want? They want younger boaters to join, adopt the outdated values of the baby boomers and just play along as never fully accepted junior members. What they don't want is to change themselves to be more attractive to the younger generations. I've seen more than one new member get chased off this way.

It's tough. If I was just starting out boating, I would be severely turned off by just about any/all of the exiting clubs. This is at a time when it is increasingly harder for new boaters to get into the activity. We see fewer families every year. Boats get bigger, but ironically without more people on board. You can only sell so many t-shirts to one slip. We may still have marina's, but with this trend "destinations" will be fewer and far between.

The bigger trend I now see is the exodus of even long time boaters. Without the younger generation to take their place, the math starts to get simple.

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Thank god for attrition!
When the cranky old bastards keel over from yelling at kids all can be well again in the world.
The reality is the old farts want the young money to help pay for the club..but they don't want to make changes or put up with happy people.
With the average age of yacht clubs, the next ten years there should be lots of changes.
HOLLYWOOD

hollywood8118 said:

The reality is the old farts want the young money to help pay for the club..but they don't want to make changes or put up with happy people.

HOLLYWOOD

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Hmmm... yep, I bet that fits, in many cases.

-Chris

hollywood8118 said:

The reality is the old farts want the young money to help pay for the club..but they don't want to make changes or put up with happy people.
With the average age of yacht clubs, the next ten years there should be lots of changes.
HOLLYWOOD

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I spent years trying to save a local yacht club which was not attracting young members. It is not a simple as the old farts don't want change. The problem with a democracy is that you have to convince a majority to vote for any proposal. It is difficult to convince people to look to the future as opposed to this year or just their own interest. The bridge at my yacht club and a couple of others I met with were well aware of the problems but the members refused to authorize any change, always looking for a simpler solution or "further study". You then enter a death spiral where change is forced as the debts mount, membership drops and services are cut leading to a further drop in membership. By the time the membership is convinced that there is a problem and that major changes are needed it is too late.

Bay Pelican said:

I spent years trying to save a local yacht club which was not attracting young members. It is not a simple as the old farts don't want change. The problem with a democracy is that you have to convince a majority to vote for any proposal. It is difficult to convince people to look to the future as opposed to this year or just their own interest. The bridge at my yacht club and a couple of others I met with were well aware of the problems but the members refused to authorize any change, always looking for a simpler solution or "further study". You then enter a death spiral where change is forced as the debts mount, membership drops and services are cut leading to a further drop in membership. By the time the membership is convinced that there is a problem and that major changes are needed it is too late.

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Money becomes a huge factor. Clubs get set in their ways, with their budget. A few members leave and it gets tighter. And they just refuse to spend on improvements that are needed. They aren't going to spend for the future because they're just looking to control costs. Facilities deteriorate. Programs end. Events lessen. Open hours are reduced. And there is no activity to recruit new members. And the group not wanting change is there for every meeting and every vote while the ones who might vote for change are busy traveling on their careers or attending kids soccer games.

Ya gotta laugh when "members" who refuse to get involved in running the club or participating in any club activities complain about a club being "cliqueish."

hollywood8118 said:

Thank god for attrition!
When the cranky old bastards keel over from yelling at kids all can be well again in the world.
The reality is the old farts want the young money to help pay for the club..but they don't want to make changes or put up with happy people.
With the average age of yacht clubs, the next ten years there should be lots of changes.
HOLLYWOOD

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I read my wife this post and we had a great laugh. Several years ago when I was on our YC board and we were trying to pass a truly modest dues increase for some desperately needed upgrades, one of my fellow board members blurted out basically the same thing. He told the elders "nothing's going to happen around here until y'all start dying off." Needless to say, that was his last term on the board for a while. (Of course, as I get closer to being an elder, I may not laugh as hard )

angus99 said:

I read my wife this post and we had a great laugh. Several years ago when I was on our YC board and we were trying to pass a truly modest dues increase for some desperately needed upgrades, one of my fellow board members blurted out basically the same thing. He told the elders "nothing's going to happen around here until y'all start dying off." Needless to say, that was his last term on the board for a while. (Of course, as I get closer to being an elder, I may not laugh as hard )

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Wow. does this hit close to home! We had a discussion at the yearly business meeting about the yearly dues increase (less that $50); we have no monthly dues.

Things got quite testy for a bit over that minor increase- our Board chair had to gently remind the membership that a large YC around the corner from us has an initiation of $15,000 + monthly dues + quarterly facilities charges (restaurant, classes, etc).

The increase was passed

Our yacht club dues are $35 per year. Just went up from $25.

Wow, our YC's down here are like in the 15k-20k to join, plus you have to spend a certain amount in food every month, yata, yata.

hollywood8118 said:

Thank god for attrition!
When the cranky old bastards keel over from yelling at kids all can be well again in the world.
The reality is the old farts want the young money to help pay for the club..but they don't want to make changes or put up with happy people.
With the average age of yacht clubs, the next ten years there should be lots of changes.
HOLLYWOOD

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You know, with luck, you may one day become an "old fart". What's the alternative?

Think about it.

Yeah, we wanted to register the web domain www.gpyc.org (for Gavins Point Yacht Club) but the Grosse Point Yacht Club near Detroit already had that domain. Just for kicks we checked that club - something like $16,000 or some five figure amount like that to join. I doubt we'd be able to make them a high enough offer to buy that domain name. Ha!

kthoennes said:

Our yacht club dues are $35 per year. Just went up from $25.

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How big is the clubhouse? Does it have wheels and a hitch?

My club is MBYC, but that domain is Mission Bay Yacht Club so we're mbycwa. There's also another MBYC - Montego Bay Yacht Club - I see their burgee in the hallway at Royal Vancouver when we go there to food and drink.

I have a couple of points that I'd like to contribute. First, as the others in this thread have indicated, there are different "types" of clubs. At one end members pay a lot of money and expect a lot of services, at the other end the members do all the work (we're at that end - we only have 1 full time employee, our totally awesome chef) and - collectively - you get out of it what you put into it. Which means if you don't like the way something is done, then you volunteer and (eventually) you can make a significant difference.

In our region our club seems to be one of the more progressive in our "Grand 14" of Puget Sound Yacht clubs - women can be members, our immediate PC is a women, and the current RC is the daughter of a PC.

It's also a requirement at our club for two members to propose a new member - it helps if there are folks we already trust who "vouch for" (and provide some guidance) to prospective members. The folks we discover in the parking lot asking "how much to join and when can I get a 50' slip" almost never work out.

So...it's important that a prospective member "test drive" a club before committing - it has to be a good fit for everyone.

rwidman said:

You know, with luck, you may one day become an "old fart". What's the alternative?

Think about it.

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Good point Ron,
Bill

The Yacht Club Of Stone Harbor, NJ sent out flyers a couple years back in the winter time looking for new (associate members)....I may not have it exact...but it went something like this...

You paid a much smaller entry fee, were expected to spend 300/mo dining/bar fee and weren't welcome during the summer "season" at all.

While a way to help cover costs..it sure left a bad taste in my mouth when I asked if after a certain amount of time could you be considered for regular membership. The answer was no...you still had to be recommended and go through the whole review process..and your associate membership counted for nothing.

My answer was thanks for the glass of wine...but no thanks....obviously a "classed" society and obvious "use" of people.

Our club has a "Sea Trial" membership good for one year. One has access to all the amenities and can participate in all club activities and pay dues. At the end of the year they pay the initiation fee, become a flag member, or leave the club.