Our club was started in 1973 as a "blue collar" yacht club. We have no paid help, the members built everything including the original docks and non-floating docks. Fifteen years ago some of the members got together and formed a plan to bring the club into the future as a modern and desirable facility. The plan called for the old docks to be removed, a new North breakwall put in and new floating docks to be installed. Some of the older members wanted no part of the new club and left, others thought it was foolish but stayed. That group insisted that the plans be changed to include some "affordable" slips for members with smaller boats, they decided that 25' was the right size. The planning engineer figured in maneuvering space for the fairways and basin and put together a plan. The largest slips we have are 40' finger piers with 16' between the finger piers and 4-point tie posts. The final plan called for a dozen 25' slips to keep the founding members happy and also included 100 or so 30' slips, the remaining 60 are 40'. This craziness of 40' slips was eventually approved by the membership, construction started ten years ago and took a little less than three years to complete with the membership doing all the work except setting the new posts. I was on the board when the project was completed and remember the meeting where it was decided that the old club rule of allowing 10% overage in any slip was null and void and we would no longer need to do that.

As we have discussed here before, the trend of larger and larger boats, both power and sail, has been going on. Most builders have few offerings(if any) under 30' these days. At our club, many the old timers have their same boats but have moved in to the 30' slips because they are easier to negotiate. The 25 footers are nearly impossible to fill, the new members coming in have much larger boats and are looking for those 40' slips. This spring the situation has come to a head. We have a waiting list of current and new members that need 40' slips and we have three of the 25' slips that have been up for bid for more than 6 months, they have been sitting empty. One of the long time members has retired and purchased a 48' powerboat, LOA is more like 54'. He did all the proper forms, notified our bridge and board of his intentions and they approved the boat coming in to the club. Now things have hit the fan, the membership is up in arms and this new 54' navigation hazard was on the agenda for the last meeting. Some of the members tried to over rule the B&B but could not muster the 2/3 majority needed. That brought up something we have not done in the 10 years we have been members, measuring boats. Everyone in the club had their boats measured to be fair, it turns out that we have many members who have boats that are longer than they claimed and are in slips they shouldn't be in. The next meeting is going to be about a rule change allowing for larger boats and yes, a 10% overage in all slips now. If we are going to continue to grow, we need to accommodate the bigger boat trend. This has now brought up new problems, out travel lift is too light, the yard trailer is too small and our backhoe won't be able to handle the additional weight. The new 48 footer weighs in at 45,000 lbs. That is roughly 20,000lbs over the limit of our lift. If anything happens to his boat we will not be able to lift him, he won't even fit in the lift well! We also will not be able to offer winter storage, free winter storage is one of the perks for members.

The point of all this is that things have changed a lot in 15 years and we are struggling to keep up. I wonder what this will look like 15 years from now??