Bay Area Yacht Clubs Develop Speaker Series Collaboration

There are lots of good reasons to join a yacht club. These include a great community of sailors, organized racing, cruising, parties, entertainment, education and reciprocal privileges with other yacht clubs. There’s collaboration and competition among the clubs, which can both be fun.

A new collaborative effort is underway between San Francisco Yacht Club’s Matthew Sessions and the St. Francis Yacht Club’s Wednesday Yachting Luncheon MC, Ron Young, who are reaching out to other Bay Area clubs to bring in more out-of-town speakers. Toward that end, commodores and speaker-series chairs from Richmond YC, Corinthian YC, St. Francis YC, San Francisco YC and Sausalito YC gathered aboard Ron Young’s powerboat, Forever Young, to discuss sharing speakers so those from farther away can give more than one presentation while in the Bay Area.

The group also gathered to honor sailing legend Gary Jobson, who was in town to speak at the St. Francis Yacht Club Wednesday Yachting Luncheon about the upcoming America’s Cup. Jobson, an amateur historian, shared stories from his famous life on the water, including winning the America’s Cup and the 1979 Fastnet Race with Ted Turner, being twice named Collegiate Sailor of the Year, his award-winning career in broadcast journalism, serving as the president of US Sailing, and authoring 23 books and producing over 2,000 TV shows on all aspects of sailing.

Matthew Sessions said, “We’ve got great collaboration going now between RYC, CYC, StFYC, SFYC, and SYC to share Speaker Series leads. Speakers are more interested to come from out of town if they can speak at multiple clubs on the same visit. I now have a list of my speaker series counterparts from about 10 Bay Area yacht clubs. I welcome anyone leading their club speaker series to email me and introduce themselves.” You can email Matthew here.

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