Sailing club sinks - world financial collapse 'the death knell'

by Nancy Knudsen on 13 Feb 2009 The world's press is full of stories of marine sales falling, yacht manufacturing companies reducing staff and sailing companies merging or closing. But spare a thought for your local yacht club...

The Knickerbocker Yacht Club was 135 years old, a club unknown to most of the world, but important to its members, a strong community entity and a place for the youngsters to learn the sport of sailing among friends and family.

At a tense private meeting held by the Knickerbocker Yacht Club's Board of Governors last month, with over 30 members in attendance, the Board voted to close the club, citing financial woes for the closure.

This global recession started in the United States, so it's no surprise that the first yacht clube to 'go under' as a direct result should also be a USA club.

Knickerbocker Yacht Club, founded in 1874, was the proud sponsor of the Knickerbocker Cup Match Races held each year on Manhasset Bay, which is part of Long Island Sound to the north east of New York City.

The Club, situated on the Harlem River in Manhattan, survived several moves, two World Wars, the Great Depression, Hurricane Carol and various internal crises, living on as the second-oldest yacht club on the Long Island Sound.

But it couldn't survive the global meltdown of 2008.

It raises the question of the health of YOUR local sailing club. Are they doing it tough too? Do you want to have the club there for future generations, for your children and grandchildren? In the case of the Knickerbocker Sailing Club, many of the general membership were unaware of the seriousness of the problem until the closure was announced. Now, the real estate of the club will be put up for sale.

Shortly after becoming the club’s commodore in January, Dr. Brian Raskin, a Long Island dentist, reluctantly brought to board members a proposal to shut down in the face of rising costs and falling membership.

'Pulling teeth is easy,' Dr. Raskin told the New York Times 'This is hard. We’re crying over the history and what this place has meant to us.'

Those in the know about the finances of the yacht club blame the recent world financial collapse. 'That was the death knell,' said Jeanne Rosenthal, an ophthalmologist and the vice commodore, whose father taught her to sail at the club as a young girl. 'I don’t know how I’ll survive without it.'

Ex-members have been expressing their grief at the club's demise. 'Knickerbocker is more than a club' writes Rita Marcus, 'it is a community. Because of its small size (even when it is running at full capacity), it really is a place where 'everybody knows your name.' We have so many great memories of our years at KYC - sailing, racing, playing tennis and simply hanging out on the porch viewing the world's most gorgeous sunsets.

'Will we find this particular kind of community elsewhere? I can't imagine we will.'

Sobering thoughts when most of us take the existence of our own yacht club to be as immutable as the ocean we sail in.