A Visit to the Elkhorn Yacht Club Nautical Flea Market

At our Latitude 38 staff meeting last week (yes, we do have them, despite complaints from the crew) our newest team member, Maddy Garcia, spoke about having recently visited Elkhorn Yacht Club and browsed the club’s annual Nautical Flea Market before joining members at the bar for drinks and salty tales. We’re hoping Maddy will share some of those tales with us, particularly the one about sailors’ piercings. But that’s for another day. Today we are sharing the musings of Scott Baly and Margarita Martinez-Baly, who sent us the tale below, which they titled “Where Boating Dreams Go To Die — Elkhorn Yacht Club’s Nautical Flea Market.” While we do not believe a nautical flea market indicates the death of boating dreams, nor does the Elkhorn Yacht Club, we believe Scott and Margarita were commenting on the items that sailors tend to collect with the idea of “one day” putting them to good use, or eventually clearing out their lockers and hanging up the lines for good. That, it seems, is a fact of boating. How many of us have a corner of the garage or shed (or the entire space) filled with boat bits and gear that we think we will one day use? (Hands shoot up all over the world.) But enough of what we think. Read the story and decide for yourself what it means to you.

“On a cool, foggy Sunday morning my wife and I arrived at the Moss Landing Marina. Even with the advertisement torn out from Latitude 38 it took us time to find the sale.

“Earlier I showed it to my wife and asked her if she wanted to go. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘It’s going to be over 107 degrees in Fresno. We can beat the Valley heat at a sale of used boating stuff.’ After all, we are always looking for gear for Knot Guilty, our 24-ft Signature Chaparral berthed at Coyote Point Marina in San Mateo, California.

“The Moss Landing marina is a refuge from the bougie [also spelled ‘boujee’] harbors at Monterey and Santa Cruz. This is a working-person’s marina. It is also where derelict boats are towed to be dismantled.

“We found our way to the boating folk with boat stuff. People trying to clear out clutter in garages and storage sheds.

“From one fellow I bought an antique for $40. Immediately he tried to sell me more stuff. Digging through a plastic box full of rope he offered me some line for $5. Then he tried to sell the whole box for $20. We chatted a few minutes and I declined. Then he offered me $20 just to take the box away. He wasn’t kidding.

“In a circle of navigational instruments, ship’s wheels, lanterns and salvaged scrimshaw sat an old salt in a chair. He seemed sad when we spoke, telling me he was tired. “That ship’s wheel was taken from the battle bridge of a WW II destroyer,” he said. Price tag was $200; out of my budget.

“Then I saw the advertisement for his boat. He was giving it away for free, along with ‘a lot of gear and equipment.’ The boat was in the water at the marina. When I asked about it, he said, ‘Are you interested?’ I told him I was not. Boaters know the most expensive boat you will ever buy is one that you get for free.

“To everything there is a season. Turn, turn, turn — so true. So, it goes in the life of boaters; beautiful days on the water turn into beautiful memories in the mind. As we sit [amid] a circle of stuff that we don’t want to leave behind.” — Scott Baly and Margarita Martinez-Baly. Scott tells us he’s been reading Latitude 38 since the 1980s, when he was a Sea Scout in the S.F. Bay Area. “Thanks Scott!”

After reading Scott and Margarita’s story, we took a little sail around the Elkhorn Yacht Club’s website and learned the club has just turned 80! According to the its information brochure, the idea for the club was seeded in 1946, in downtown Watsonville, when boat owners Gil Perry and Ade Nelson stood on a street corner and had a conversation about their shared passion for boating. Perry and Nelson, and six other sailors, had their first annual club meeting aboard SV Golden Dragon. (It doesn’t say what type of boat the Dragon was, or whose.)

One year later the members purchased a wooden barge that would serve as their headquarters in the Moss Landing Harbor. As the club grew and became practically and financially viable, a building was erected on the barge and became the clubhouse in which members meet to this day.

We extend our congratulations to the Elkhorn Yacht Club members past and present on their 80 years of sailing community.