Santa Cruz Yacht Club
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| Short name | SCYC |
|---|---|
| Founded | January 5th, 1928 |
| Location |
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| Commodore | Barry Keeler - 2017 |
| Website | SCYC.org |
The Santa Cruz Yacht Club (SCYC) is a yacht club founded in 1928 and is the oldest, and currently the only, yacht club in Santa Cruz, California.
In 1925, two local bankers, Bruce Sharpe and Charlie Towne, purchased a 14-foot cat boat and began sailing it on Monterey Bay out of Santa Cruz, California. Their sailing enthusiasm was noticed and they were soon joined by local merchant Sam Leask Jr. after which they joined the nearest yacht club, the San Francisco Yacht Club, which was located at Sausalito Cove. Soon after they joined, the overcrowded conditions in the cove led to a movement to relocate the clubhouse. The membership, however, was deeply divided as to whether to move the club to Belvedere Cove or to a site on the San Francisco waterfront. A majority favored the Marin site and the clubhouse was relocated. The remainder of the members split from the club and formed the St. Francis Yacht Club on the Marina. The trio from Santa Cruz had friends on both sides of the schism and rather than choose sides, Sharpe put forth the idea of starting a yacht club closer to home.
Sharp, Towne and Leask invited a dozen or so friends to join them for dinner in a balcony room at the Saddle Rock Grill and a lively discussion took place about the possibility of forming a local yacht club. By the time “last call” was sounded, all those present agreed to become members, thus establishing the Santa Cruz Yacht Club. It was January 5, 1928.
The infant club did not immediately spark a storm of sailing activity. As Leask recalled: “…At the outset, the members’ knowledge of things nautical was decidedly limited. It was the era of prohibition and in order to hold the membership together we resorted to frequent expeditions to nearby bootleg establishments for meetings which were hilarious and convivial if not particularly yachting oriented.”
The SCYC kept up its San Francisco connections, sponsoring long-distance races with both the San Francisco Yacht Club and the St. Francis Yacht Club. One of the first races that the Santa Cruz Yacht Club sponsored was a power boat race from Long Beach to San Francisco.
The San Francisco boating fraternity welcomed the presence of SCYC members on their top-flight yachts which were manned by competent and well-disciplined crews.
Sharp was elected the first Commodore, Jay Harris, who designed the club burgee, the second, and Leask the third. Those who were present at the time agree that the first truly accomplished seaman to join the club was Lino Nicoli who owned the 42-foot yawl “Pathfinder.” It was Nicoli who first introduced many of the early members to the fine art of seamanship.
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Wikipedia