Crew Wanted: How to Get on the Water at PCYC Before You Own a Boat
Crew Wanted: How to Get on the Water at PCYC Before You Own a Boat
Walk down to the water at Port Credit on a Wednesday evening in July and you can watch the whole harbour empty itself. Boats slip their lines in twos and threes, motor out toward the open lake, and gather beyond the shelter in a loose, restless circle, waiting on the first warning signal at 1830.
From the shore it has the look of a closed world, the sort of thing you would need a boat, a history and probably a blazer to join. The truth turns out to be far friendlier than that, because a good number of the people out there tonight got their seat aboard by sending one email.
Start With the Crew Bank
Every racing boat runs on hands. A spinnaker boat on a Wednesday night might sail with six or eight people aboard, and every one of them has a job: someone on the bow, someone tailing a line, someone whose entire responsibility for ninety seconds is to sit still on the high side and watch for the boat coming in on starboard. Skippers spend a good part of every season hunting for people they can count on to turn up.
Meanwhile, scattered all over Mississauga, there are people who would give up a Wednesday evening for the lake in a heartbeat, and who quietly assume the price of admission is a boat of their own.
The Crew Bank exists to introduce those two groups to each other. Linda Clarke runs it as Crew Bank Captain, and the work is exactly what it sounds like. She knows which skippers are short-handed, she hears from the people who want to sail, and she puts them together. You send her an email saying what you can offer and which evenings you are free, and she takes it from there.
Sailing experience helps, of course, although ask any skipper and they will tell you the crew they remember are the ones who turned up week after week, on time, in the rain.
JOIN THE CREW BANK
Tell Linda Clarke what you can offer and which evenings you are free, and she will match you with a boat. The Learn to Sail team at learntosail@pcyc.net can also put you in touch with a skipper. getsailing7@outlook.com
What a Wednesday Night Asks of You
Club racing runs from the middle of May to the middle of September on Monday and Wednesday evenings, and the two nights have quite different personalities.
Mondays are White Sail, main and jib and a steadier rhythm, built for the committed racers and for sailors who prefer a relaxed pace alike. Wednesdays step it up, running competitive spinnaker racing alongside the White Sail fleets, and that is when the evening really sharpens: more sail, more speed, more shouting, and a great deal more that can go beautifully right. Spinnaker fleets sail a windward/leeward course twice around while the White Sail boats take a triangle and then a windward/leeward leg. Both nights run under the PHRF-LO handicap, so a well-sailed twenty-year-old boat regularly beats a newer and faster one once the numbers land, which is a fair part of why the racing stays so interesting.
As new crew you will start with the jobs that reward willingness over skill, things like tailing a line, shifting your weight across the boat at the right moment, and keeping your eyes up for traffic. The vocabulary sounds like a foreign language for about three weeks, and then one evening you catch yourself using it. By the end of a season plenty of people have a regular boat, a regular seat, and a skipper who saves it for them.
Three Ways onto a Boat
The Crew Bank is the shortest route, and two others run alongside it.
The Club's adult courses follow the official Sail Canada curriculum, and the people teaching them are the real article. Katie Nicoll, a racing enthusiast and National Judge, leads the Adult Intro to Racing aboard the Club's J/24s, responsive seven-metre keelboats that reward good sailing and punish daydreaming. Merilee Wright teaches the live-aboard cruising course, and she brings certification from Sail Canada, the American Sailing Association and NauticEd, along with more than twenty years, over a thousand sailing days, twenty-five hundred nautical miles and fifteen bareboat charters. Finish a course and the Learn to Sail team will help you find a boat to crew on, because that part comes with it.
Then there is BoatHub, which gives members season-long access to PCYC's maintained J/24 fleet with the boat, the maintenance and the insurance all included. The Club puts it at less than forty dollars a sail. You book a slot and go sailing.
If all of this sounds like a lot to learn, the Club reckons eighteen hours is enough to turn a complete beginner into a confident crew member. There is also a Crew membership that runs from April to October and skips the initiation fee entirely, which exists more or less for the people reading this.
SEE THE ADULT COURSES
Sail Canada standards, dinghy and keelboat streams, and the racing course on the Club's J/24 fleet. pcyc.net/adult-learn-to-sail
The People Who End Up Out There
They arrive by every route imaginable. Some sailed as teenagers, spent twenty years ashore raising children and building careers, and want that feeling back. Some finish a Learn to Sail course in June and spend July looking for the next thing. Some have stood at the water's edge on a summer evening, watched the fleet stream out, and decided they would rather be aboard than watching.
Every one of those is a fine way in. Skippers train crew every single season, because it comes with owning a boat, and most of them thoroughly enjoy the teaching.
The evening carries on well past the finish gun, too. Boats come back in, lines go on, covers go over, and before long half the fleet is up in the clubhouse re-sailing the second beat with their hands. A fair amount of what makes a club a club happens in that hour.
There is a question most people ask themselves long before they ever look at a listing, which is whether they love this enough to own one. A season aboard somebody else's boat is the cheapest and most honest way to find your answer.
Ask Now, Sail in May
The fleet comes out of the water in a few weeks. Cradles go under keels, masts come down, and the harbour settles into its long grey quiet until spring, which makes this a strange moment to invite anybody to take up sailing and the ideal moment to put your name forward.
Skippers build their crews over the winter. They sit with a beer in February and think about who they want on the rail come May, and the people who ask in the autumn are the people they think of.
So if the idea of being out there next summer has any pull at all, send the email now while those lists are still being written. It costs you five minutes, and the likeliest outcome is a few Wednesday evenings next summer on somebody else's boat, working out just how much you love it.
COME AND LOOK AROUND
Book a tour of the Club, see the fleet and the facilities, and ask whatever you like. pcyc.net/discover