“It started when some folks were planning
to sail up to their summer homes on Mackinac Island and decided
to make a race out of it,” said Greg Miaracki, race chairman.
That first race involved six boats and little fanfare,
a far cry from what will take place this summer. There will be
hundreds of boats with more than 5,000 sailors crewing them and
thousands of spectators, including Chicago Mayor Richard Daley,
on Navy Pier cheering them on.
That’s a Big Mac, and it’s being staged,
as it always has been, by the Chicago Yacht Club, whose 1,500
members make it one of the largest clubs in the country.
You expect the Great Lakes to be a watery basin
of great yachting and home to numerous yacht clubs, including
some of the oldest in the country — and that it is. The
Detroit Regional Yacht-Racing Association alone includes 29 member
clubs in the 100-mile stretch between Toledo and Port Huron.
But what surprises many is that yacht clubs are
as much social groups as they are marinas. Don’t own a
boat? No problem.
“We have 900 members, and 50 percent of them
are social members who don’t even own a boat,” said
Susan Hughes, membership marketing manager at the Grosse Pointe
Yacht Club.
What they have in common is love for the water.
“One of the reasons people join a yacht club
is to have access to the water, even if it’s just to sit
on the patio and look at the river,” said Jim Rodgers,
a member of the Bayview and Detroit yacht clubs.
The oldest yacht club in North America is the Detroit
Boat Club, founded by oarsmen as a rowing club in 1839, two years
after Michigan became a state. Five years later the famed New
York Yacht Club was established, and in 1851 its members took
a 100-foot racing yacht named America across the Atlantic Ocean
to race against their British competitors. The Yanks won, and
the America’s Cup began its long history as the oldest
and most distinguished prize in sailing.
But it was after the Civil War, when the country
entered a long period of economic prosperity, that yacht clubs
flourished, particularly in the Great Lakes region. The Detroit
Yacht Club was established in 1868; the Chicago Yacht Club was
founded in 1875; and Holland’s Macatawa Bay Yacht Club
formed in 1899.
The Grosse Pointe Yacht Club was founded in 1914
by ice boat racers who combined the sails and runners of their
rigs to fly across a frozen Lake St. Clair. Eventually, Grosse
Pointe Yacht Club broadened its appeal beyond racing and sailing,
reflecting the progression of most yacht clubs over the years — more
socializing, less sailing.
That’s especially true for the Mackinac Island
Yacht Club. Established in 1973, MIYC is perhaps Michigan’s
most unusual club and certainly the hardest to join. The club
has 300 members and another 150 waiting to join but only because
officials cap off the list. Half of its members are from out
of state — some as far away as California and Florida — and
many don’t own a boat. Nor does the club maintain a marina
or any slips.
What MIYC has is a clubhouse, a century-old mansion
downtown on Huron Street with eight bedrooms and a large porch
overlooking the state-owned marina.
“It’s like a B&B,” said David
Rowe, vice commodore. “We were formed primarily as a social
club for cottagers and islanders. Now, for many members this
is their vacation. They come up to the island every summer and
stay here with their family.”
“Mackinac Island is a very unusual yacht
club,” Rodgers agreed. “David (Rowe) once told me
that his son will never get to be a member because he probably
won’t outlive the waiting list.”
A waiting list, however, is not a luxury most clubs enjoy. In its
heyday during the 1920s, membership to the Detroit Yacht Club peaked
at 3,000 just after a concrete bridge to Belle Isle opened in 1923.
Today it fluctuates between 900 and 1,000.
The DYC clubhouse is an impressive Mediterranean-style
villa that sits on an 11-acre, man-made island just off Belle
Isle. The club maintains a 400-slip marina on the Detroit River,
while members claim their clubhouse is the largest of any yacht
club in the country. To attract more, DYC sponsors a youth swim
team, offers tennis lessons, and is home to its own Rod & Gun
Club.
Equally memorable is the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club’s
clubhouse, overlooking Lake St. Clair. The 18th-century, Italian
Renaissance-style club with its stucco and red tile roof was
dedicated in 1929. Its most prominent feature is a 187-foot bell
tower that boaters use as a navigational aid.
Along with a 280-slip marina and sailing center
that boasts a fleet of club-owned sailboats, GPYC includes three
restaurants, a renowned wine cellar, clay tennis courts, lighted
paddle tennis courts, an Olympic-sized pool, and even a bowling
alley.
“We need to have activities for the non-boaters;
that’s how you survive,” Hughes said. “We are
actively seeking new members, and I’m sure that’s
true for most yacht clubs.”
Sailboats may have been the foundation of yacht
clubs forming in the 19th century, but they have been replaced
by powerboats. On average, sailboats only occupy 10 to 30 percent
of the slips at most yacht clubs.
One exception is Macatawa Bay Yacht Club. The club
maintains 75 slips on the west end of Lake Macatawa, only a half
mile from Lake Michigan, and three-quarters of them are occupied
by sailboats. That includes Retriever, which won the top division
of the 2003 Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac, and Heartbreaker,
which captured the Canada’s Cup last fall.
Even more the exception is Bayview Yacht Club, located just upriver
from DYC near the mouth of Lake St. Clair.
“While Detroit Yacht Club is very broad socially,
Bayview is focused on nothing but sailboat racing,” said
Rodgers, a member of both clubs. “Not every member at Bayview
owns a boat, but they are all sailors.”
Bayview is known for two things: as the home of
the hummer, and the Port Huron to Mackinac Race. In 1968, Bayview
bartender Jerome Adams combined rum, Kahlua, vanilla ice cream
and crushed ice, calling his new drink a hummer. Members loved
it, and its popularity spread.
By then BYC was already regarded as one of the
premier sailing clubs in North America, thanks in part to the
Bayview Yacht Club Port Huron to Mackinac Race. The club was
founded in 1915; the first Port Huron to Mackinac Race followed
a decade later with a 12-boat fleet following a 235-mile course
along the Lake Huron shoreline. Five finished.
Last year, 250 yachts departed from Port Huron for Mackinac Island;
the top boats finished the 252-mile course in 43 hours.
Despite its strong sailing focus, Bayview does
have one thing in common with many other yacht clubs: It, too,
welcomes new members.
“We had a waiting list in the 1980s but don’t
now,” Rodgers said. “But I have more confidence in
the future of yacht clubs than I do in golf courses. Despite
the economy, I think there will always be people to support yacht
clubs. Boating is something that is ingrained in you — you
can never get away from it.”
Whether you own a boat or not. ≈
Jim DuFresne resides in Clarkston.
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