OPEN SEAS? : Yacht Clubs Argue That They’re Not Just for Rich Men

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions yacht clubs?

Do you think about the America’s Cup or about Dr. I. M. Rich sipping Dom Perignon and eating caviar while playing in the water with his million-dollar toy?

Do you think about the Congressional Cup and other regattas or about some millionaire drifting along in I Have More Money Than You, a mile-long boat with more luxuries than some Caribbean nations?

The stereotype of yachting as a rich man’s sport exists, although yachtsmen say it is, in many cases, unwarranted.

Despite their protests, however, yachting continues to be perceived as the stuffy sport of the pretentious--so much so, in fact, that the United States Yachting Assn., yachting’s governing body, has been trying to change its name to the U.S. Sailing Assn. in an effort to escape the perception and attract more members.

In reality, however, yacht clubs, as do the members and their boats, come in all shapes and sizes--although there isn’t quite as much variety in the sport’s color, lily-white.

Yes, there are ritzy, ostentatious clubs but there are also modest, uncomplicated ones. In fact, of the 73 yacht clubs in Southern California, you can find one that is ideally suited for Thurston B. Howell III and then, just across the marina, another that is perfect for Gilligan.

There is, for example, the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, which keeps its membership fees confidential, reasoning that if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. And then there is the South Bay Yacht Racing Club, which charges only $35 annually and gives members a $10 discount if they work actively in the club.

There is the Catalina Island Yacht Club--with its $6,000 initiation fee, $600 annual fee and a five-year waiting list--which refuses to share its popular facility in Avalon with other clubs. And then there is the Belmont Shore Sailing Assn.--$15 initiation fee, $20 annual fee, no waiting list--which doesn’t even have a facility to share.

There is the Long Beach Yacht Club, which has a state-of-the-art facility, complete with a spacious room for wedding receptions and a ballroom in which live orchestras entertain every weekend. And then there is the Los Angeles Yacht Club, which has little more than 40 blue plastic chairs for meetings and which is sandwiched between a federal prison and a tuna cannery that gives off a pungent odor.

There are big clubs such as the California Yacht Club with its 1,225 members, and small ones such as the Buccaneer Yacht Club with its 70. There are formal clubs such as the San Diego Yacht Club, which requires two sponsors and six references, and informal ones such as the Pierpont Bay Yacht Club, which has a rule against neckties.

There are specialty clubs such as the Cerritos Bahia Yacht Club, consisting of all powerboaters, and diverse ones such as the Chula Vista Yacht Club, which is 43% powerboaters, 29% percent sailboaters and 28% non-boat owners.

“The average yacht club member is offended by the stereotype,” said Paul Frazier, who next year will become the Long Beach club’s commodore, or highest ranking officer. “There are all sorts of clubs, ranging from full-service clubs with fancy restaurants to so-called paper clubs, which own little more than a post-office box.”

For the most part, paper clubs are designed for those of average income. They usually have modest fees and, although they do not have facilities, they often use those of the bigger clubs through reciprocal privileges offered by clubs in the Southern California Yachting Assn. There are 17 paper clubs in the 73-member SCYA, 14 of which have fewer than 100 members.

“I started in yachting in an eight-foot boat,” said Harold Romberg, commodore of the 43-member Marina Yacht Club of Long Beach. “I moved up to a 14-foot boat and thought it was a huge boat. I was king of the sea. This is about fun, not money.”

Ironically, however, the most popular clubs are also the more expensive ones.

For example, although it is unusual for a club with an initiation fee of less than $1,500 to have a waiting list at all, the 1,100-member San Diego Yacht Club, which has an initiation fee of up to $10,000, has a four-year wait just to get an application. And there usually is another year’s wait after that. Likewise, the 500-member Del Rey Yacht Club, which also has an initiation fee of $10,000, has a waiting list of more than three years.

“We don’t need any more members,” said Joan Semper, manager of the Del Rey Yacht Club. “We don’t need John Q. Public standing at the door, wanting to mingle with some of our wealthy and famous guests.”

About that stereotype . . .

“There is a lot of arrogance in this sport,” said Vic Pollard, commodore of the Westlake Yacht Club in Marina del Rey. “There is a snobbiness, and it is even stronger in some of the bigger clubs that get an elitist attitude because of their wealth and possessions.”

Perhaps that atmosphere explains why yacht clubs have so few black members. David Poe, editor of a monthly Southern California sailing magazine, estimates that there are “less than a dozen blacks” who belong to area yacht clubs, a surprisingly low number considering that there are more than 20,000 SCYA members overall.

There are other minorities heavily represented--Asians, for example--but blacks are almost entirely absent. In fact, many commodores say that Poe’s less-than-a-dozen estimate might even be a little high.

The common explanation is that blacks simply don’t apply, but Larry Ambrose, commodore of the Belmont Shore Sailing Assn., offers another. “Blacks have not gotten into this sport, and I would say it’s because they are not warmly received,” Ambrose said.

Although his 94-member club doesn’t have any black members, Ambrose said it’s because they haven’t applied, and that they would be welcome if they did.

Said Willis Edwards, president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People: “It is a silent, unspoken code, not blatant racism. In order to get into a club, you have to be invited into it. You have to know people. Will a white person sponsor a black person?”

Nathan Johnson, a pharmacist, and his wife, Dorothy, are the only black members in the 1,225-member California Yacht Club. Their 21-year-old son, Eric, is also applying for membership and the Johnsons say they have never encountered any instances of racism.

But Dorothy does offer an explanation as to why there are so few black members.

“Perhaps black people are going on past information and rumors concerning rejection of minorities in those places,” she said. “But we have been very well accepted.”

Some other Yacht club members agreed with Ambrose, saying that that blacks simply don’t apply for membership and that they would be welcome if they did. Other explanations for the lack of blacks include that yachting is too expensive and that inner-city black children haven’t been brought up on yachting.

There have been, however, other kinds of blatant discrimination in yachting. Less than a year ago, for example, women weren’t allowed in the bar area of the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco, one of the most prestigious clubs in the United States. And even today, women aren’t allowed in the bar at the New York Yacht Club, perhaps the nation’s most prestigious club.

Here in the Southland, in nearly any yacht club, prominently displayed are pictures of white male commodores, past and present, lined up on the wall, usually right next to the shrine-like glass cases where the racing trophies are kept.

The California Yacht Club is an exception. There hangs a picture of Betta Mortarotti, who this year became the first female commodore of a major yacht club.

“Stepping into a man’s world is quite a big step,” she said. “For many years this was a sport for rich males, but that has changed in the last 10 years.”

Mortarotti is at least half right. Yacht clubs are still dominated by males, but they are no longer necessarily dominated by rich males. Although there are many yachtsmen like Roy Disney, owner of a 50-foot and a 70-foot boat, there are also many like Matthew Portz, owner of no boat.

Portz said he used to own a boat but can’t afford one now, so he simply continues to spend his free time at the Long Beach Yacht Club soaking in the sun and the atmosphere, just as he used to do when he had a boat.

Portz, a retired aerospace worker, may be something of an extreme case, but so, too, are the members with million-dollar boats.

The average yacht club member, according to the SCYA, owns a boat 24 feet or shorter, although there are boats as small as eight feet and as large as 120. The SCYA estimates that the average yacht club member has owned his boat for more than five years and that it is worth less than $8,000. Also, the average cost to join a non-paper club is $1,913 for initiation fees and $76 a month.

It costs about $5,000 for a good, used sailboat in the 20- to 30-foot range. Powerboats of the same size can cost up to twice as much, but sailboat owners make up more than 65% of Southern California yacht club members.

More than the club or boat costs, however, it is the upkeep that usually drowns the modest-income members in expenses. Rent for an aquatic parking space, known as a slip, costs about $8 monthly per foot of boat, so a 25-foot sailboatcosts about $200 a month to park. “Slip costs are what is sort of pushing the little guy out,” said Frazier, the Long Beach commodore-to-be. “Slip rates have been going up much faster than inflation rates, more at the rate of medical insurance.”

Slips, in fact, have become so expensive that many people try to get the most out of them by doing what is known as slip sailing--that is, using the boat to get some sun, or simply to get out of the house, without ever leaving the slip.

Other people, as did 16 members of the California Yacht Club, simply sell their houses and live on their boats year-round.

“We raised five children and always lived in spacious houses with swimming pools,” said Bunny Rippel, who lives with her husband, Bob, in a cramped 41-foot powerboat. “We gave the kids everything and moved into the boat, and we’ve loved it.

“It’s a marvelous way of life, to be surrounded by neighbors who are, so to speak, in the same boat. And, hell, we look at our beautiful back yard and don’t even have to cut the lawn anymore.”

There are other ways for rank-and-file yacht club members to cut the costs. Many yachtsmen cut corners by simply storing their boats on trailers at home, avoiding slip expenses. They then have to pay only launching fees. And many families purchase boats together, sharing it and the expenses.

“That yachting is a rich man’s sport is a big misconception,” said Robert Mole, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles Yacht Club. “I’m a retired naval officer and retired naval officers don’t make a lot of money.”

Mole was saying this in the club’s rickety main building, which used to be blue and white before the paint started chipping. The club has been operating since 1903, making it one of the oldest in the area, and it’s obvious from the surroundings that it hasn’t changed much over the years.

There are no Jacuzzis here, no tennis courts, no ballrooms, no dining facilities. The floors are wood. The boats aren’t even in slips but rather anchored in the middle of Fish Harbor, making for a view that belongs on a postcard. If this were a movie, it would be in black and white.

“It’s simple here,” Mole said. “Sailing itself is an old way of propulsion, so it represents the past and that makes it comfortable. This is one of the few clubs where grandfather, father and grandchildren have been members.”

Middle-class members, he made sure to note before getting up and walking to his car at the end of a dusty, dead-end street.

And there, he was parked between an apple-red Porsche and a dented station wagon.