Yacht Club of the Month - Coral Bay YC
“All are welcome at Coral Bay Yacht Club, where members think ‘blue blazers’ are enclosed pickups built by Chevy and painted blue.” (Quote attributed to Cap’n Fatty Goodlander.)
It’s a club without a clubhouse, though people wander into a landmark bar and restaurant at Coral Bay on the southeastern coast of St. John, US Virgin Islands. It isn’t completely clear whether this club has officers and membership rules, either. As Cap’n Fatty wrote back in 1991, “Often, its charter members can’t remember who now is Commodore…a lot of people who say they are members really aren’t…and a lot of people who claim not to be members really are.” There don’t seem to be many official club files, either. But it’s a fact that the Coral Bay Yacht Club was established in the late 1970s by a group of boaters motivated to do good things for their community.
According to the present Commodore, Dave Conro, “these pioneers began meeting on the first Wednesday of each month at Skinny Legs (or maybe it was Red Beards back then). Since then, rarely a first-Wednesday has gone by at Skinny Legs without encountering a group of folks calling themselves the Coral Bay Yacht Club. Throughout its years of disorganized organization, CBYC has sponsored several annual events aimed at raising money for various groups in the Coral Bay community.”
Events sponsored by the club annually are the Thanksgiving Regatta, the Commodore’s Cup, and the Flotilla (now known as the Beach Party).
The 24th Annual Thanksgiving Regatta in November raised funds for KATS St. John (Kids and the Sea), a marine safety program formed in 1988 that has educated more than 500 students from ages eight to 18.
The May Commodore’s Cup also will benefit KATS. “This is a somewhat more structured regatta that combines the organized, disorganized efforts of all three of the yacht clubs on St. John – Coral Bay Yacht Club, St. John Yacht Club, and Nauti Yacht Club – for a weekend of some of the best racing in the waters around St. John,” says Conro.
A third club event is its Beach Party. “For many years, this event was a flotilla in which landlubbers joined skippers who volunteered their boats to sail to Norman Island, BVI, for a day of food, music and fun. When people started to complain that the sailing time cut into their beach time (not to mention the thrill of clearing customs), the event was relocated to Vie’s Campground Beach on the East End of St. John and renamed,” the Commodore reports. Proceeds for this event have gone to the Emmaus Moravian Church in Coral Bay for its years of offering a sanctuary from hurricanes and to the Guy H. Benjamin Elementary School for enhancement of the education of Coral Bay young people.
In addition to its annual money raising events, CBYC works with the VI Department of Public Works in an annual clean up of Coral Bay harbor and with the VI National Park Service in preserving the beautiful park waters in St. John.
Is this offbeat quintessentially-Caribbean club likely to change? Commodore Conro says that every couple of years, a new CBYC member may mention the possibility of finding a permanent clubhouse. “That idea is quietly tabled and the members move on with the business at hand – finding ways to volunteer their time and talents for the betterment of St. John.”
For information on joining the Coral Bay Yacht Club, call (340) 715-2666 or stop by Skinny Legs on a first-Wednesday. Boat owners and non-boat owners are welcome.
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