How to Succeed as a Yacht Club While Really Trying
- Douglas McCormick
- May 18
- 2 min read
According to the U.S Coast Guard's 2024 Recreational Boating Statistics, sailboats account for just 0.7% out of every thousand recreational vessels registered in this country.
Just seven out of a thousand private boats.
Sales of new sailboats peaked in 1989, at just 14,500 new vessels per year. Since then, new-sailboat sales have plunged by almost 80%, to stabilize at about 3000 boats a year since 2022.
Total sailboat registrations in the U.S held essentially steady from 1990 through 2010. They even ticked up slightly in 2011, to just over registered U.S. 200,00 sailboats. Since then, however, the American sailing fleet has shrunk by more than a third, to about 130,000.
We are a minority among U.S. boaters, and a dwindling minority at that.
There’s a business axiom that goes, “In good times, build revenue. In bad times, build market share.”
So, the Harlem Yacht Club has been building market share.
HYC’s Active boat-owning membership did initially decline with the rest of the market. Falling, for example, by 17% between 2012 and 2015.
But...we halted the slide there. HYC's boat-owning membership has remained constant for the past decade, while sailboat registrations continued to drop by another 24 percent nationwide.
When the wind and the current are against you, and the whole fleet is losing ground, dropping an anchor can be the best way to take the lead.
This is not the whole picture, however.
Over the past ten years, we have also built strength by welcoming growing numbers of Social and Intermediate members to the Club. Many of the latter, of course, join to sail our Club Boats and will, we hope, become Active members themselves.
In fact, Intermediate and Social membership have each nearly tripled since 2015, and HYC’s dues-paying rolls have grown by 85% from 2015 and out May Board meeting.
So, I call Harlem Yacht Club is a bright spot amidst the general gloom.
Comments