Club Boats

WMYC has three boats for club members to use:

Sonatas – Scherzo and Frank

Nordic Folkboat – Rio

The purpose is to enable those members both with and without boats, or those with less sailing experience, to enjoy the benefits of keel boat sailing and racing. In the first few months of the 2026 season we have had 85 crew out on 36 occasions and the boats have been used for training and racing as well as just fun sailing.

We aim to have the boats available from April until October and get more members out sailing.

There are a few simple guidelines we need to apply:

Fees.

Paid into the bar or office please as ‘Club Boat’ fees:

To race – a fee of £15 per boat per race or £80 for Mersea Week.
To go out for a 2 to 3 hour training sail – £10 per crew, skipper is free.
To hire for a casual sail £20 for a half day or £40 for a whole day.

These fees help to pay for the maintenance, haul out and launching.

Skippers.

Most of the work to maintain the boats is done by volunteers and it is important we look after the boats as best as possible, for everyone’s enjoyment.

To ensure the boat systems are understood and YC procedures are followed anyone skippering a club boat must be an experienced sailor and have had a brief induction session with Ian Low, Robert Hawkins or Richard Bailey. Text them on the numbers below to arrange.

We are keen to find more skippers who can help with our regular training sessions, contact Richard Bailey if you can help.

We also want to build a team of people, from the skippers or crew list, to help with practical jobs on the boats again contact Richard if you would like to be involved.

Crewing.

We have a Crew Booking WhatsApp group that Skippers use to offer sails; any member can join this, just ask any of the contacts below to be added. To crew you must provide your own life jacket, appropriate clothing and a water bottle. We suggest you should have reasonable agility as these are small keel boats and can be lively in a breeze.

Insurance.

The boats are insured to sail and race ONLY for WMYC members. Non members, guests or family are not permitted to crew or use the boats, but we do have a four month membership arrangement for £70 to try and help with this restriction; note the arrangement is non repeatable, but we hope that after four months people will want to join the club full-time.

Booking.

All club boats must be booked out using the club’s web based booking system. This is accessible to the registered skippers who take crews out training and they can book a boat out for a member on request or ask Robert, Ian or Richard.

Please avoid booking boats out on:

– Race days/evenings (unless racing) esp Friday evenings & Club races.

– Training sessions on Monday evenings until August then Saturday mornings until hauling out.

The Sonata is well designed, fun boat, easy to sail and great for instructing; a big fleet of them locally provides some good one-design racing. Colne Yacht Club has been running a fleet of four boats successfully for many years, we hope to build on their experience and in time maybe add RYA keelboat courses to our existing RYA training programme.

The Nordic Folkboat is a legend and is sailed and raced around the globe. Well balanced and a delight to sail, West Mersea now has at least seven which is creating a fine opportunity to show these classy boats sailing and racing at their best.

Contacts:

The key members involved in the Club Boats are:

Ian Low – 07831 651255
Robert Hawkins – 07922 677750
Richard Bailey – 07970 170594
Alan Jones – 07906 912671
Conny Calvert – 07884 068055