Membership Information

The Club was founded in 1959 and is snugly situated in a well-protected hurricane hole off the Saugatuck River in Westport. Our Clubhouse, grounds and floating docks are home to our membership and some 160 boats, which are a near-even mix of power and sail. Our bubbler system makes year-round, in-water storage possible and practical. Our facilities include a fuel dock, hauling site and marine Travelift, making yacht maintenance convenient and more affordable. The club plans activities throughout the year offering something for everybody; it welcomes families and provides boating programs such as Fishing, Cruising and Sailboat Racing as well as supporting ongoing Boating Education and Youth activities.

Throughout the year we receive inquires about membership and often prospective members are invited to club activities by their sponsors during the summer and winter. Our new member admissions process begins in earnest in late summer and is typically complete by early spring.

The club plans and hosts events for members to get together throughout the year. Some events are long standing traditions such as the Clambake - first held forty seven years ago - which now accommodates a large crowd under a tent off C Dock. Other events are simple gatherings to share friendship and common bonds resulting from club membership. Awards Night, a somewhat raucous celebration of both true yachting achievement and embarrassing gaffes on the water, always brings a packed house each November. While we are not a club with many formalities, we take Commissioning and Decommissioning Day seriously and enjoy their pomp and circumstance, especially the opening of our boating season. Every other year, with the changing of the bridge, we throw the Commodore's Ball - a joyous and glamorous event, where Commodores past and present provide an oral history of the club in styles solemn and humorous. And we dance well into the night.

Whether fishing for snappers, jumping into the pool, tagging along with Mom and Dad for an overnight at anchor off Cockenoe Island or just running around the docks, kids make Saugatuck Harbor Yacht Club a better place. After all, our club is a family of families and some of these children, if we're lucky, will join the next generation here. They will carry the club's DNA. While boating has always been the focal point of junior programs, onshore events such as the Halloween Party, Holiday Party and Snapper Tournament have joined the list of perennial traditions. And these traditions are never stodgy. At SHYC, they demand a creative flair; for more than twenty years Santa has arrived at the often-icy docks, his sled a Boston Whaler, and on Halloween, ghosts and goblins parade along the docks from one boat to the next in search of treats.

As a club almost equally divided between power and sail, our frequent weekend cruises are designed to accommodate both. Though we do not venture too far from homeport on these weekend outings, we still have a variety of harbors and clubs to visit - on both shores of the Sound. Some of these weekend events can exceed 100 members. Summer brings plans for longer cruises with a July Fourth week-long cruise and a two week cruise later in the summer. Cruising brings an opportunity for our new members, besides meeting many of their fellow members for the first time, to realize another benefit of belonging to SHYC - reciprocal rights. In essence, we belong to the finest clubs on the Sound.

Since the earliest days of SHYC, members have loved the excitement of fishing Long Island Sound for striped bass, bluefish and flounder. But few ventured out to fish in offshore waters then. As bigger and faster sport fishing boats populated the club, bringing with them greater range, Block Island, Montauk and other offshore fishing hotspots became accessible. As much as the Fish Program at SHYC was, and continues to be, about the sport of fishing, priorities for the program have grown to include some outstanding events to include a broader cross section of the membership. The annual Fish Bake in May has grown from a small informal pub dinner to one of the largest events at the club in recent years. In addition to the Fish Bake, the annual Block Island Tournament has also grown.

For a relatively young yacht club, having recently celebrated our 50th Jubilee, SHYC has a strong racing heritage. We have competed successfully in everything from the harshest international ocean races to local, round the mark interclub events. Each year twenty to thirty members and their crews participate at varying levels of competition for our club. The Wednesday night series is the backbone of the Race Program which includes single handed, double handed and weekend events.