The idea of yachting usually conjures up images of men in blue blazers and white loafers sipping martinis aboard their swanky vessels saying things like, “Oh cabin boy, fetch us another round, won’t you?”
That’s definitely not the vibe at Alameda’s Aeolian Yacht Club. Leon Kolinsky, 81, a longtime member, says the club right next to the Bay Farm Island Bridge on Fernside Boulevard is a “workingman’s yacht club.” While that may sound like an oxymoron, it fits the Aeolian perfectly.
That’s because members volunteer to do all the work to maintain the club — everything from dock repairs to bartending is handled by the 200 Aeolian club members. The club’s first members even built their original, still-in-use house clubhouse way back when the club was founded in 1906. Club members also recently turned the upstairs pool room into a bar and then created a new pool room downstairs.
“There’s really nothing that you see at the club that hasn’t been done by members for members,” says longtime office manager Sherri Armijo.
The do-it-yourself ethic is also evident in the club’s workshop full of tools that members can use to fix up their rigs. This is helpful for a hobby in which the word “boat” is often referred to as an acronym for “break out another thousand.”
Named after Aeolus, the Greek god of the winds, initially the club site was surrounded by small boat yards, oyster farms and trestle bridges to Bay Farm Island and Oakland. Today the Fernside neighborhood on Alameda’s East End abuts the harbor’s eastern boundary, and busy Fernside Boulevard runs in front.
Over the years the club has played an important role in Bay Area boating. Larry Knight, the club’s founder and first “commodore” (yacht-club-speak for “president”), was instrumental in establishing the Pacific Inter-Club Yacht Association, the organization that oversees yacht racing on San Francisco Bay. That association’s members have reciprocal rights to park their boats at clubs around the bay along with other perks.
Over the years, luminaries such as Jack London were known to attend Aeolian soirees, and early on many commercial fishermen docked ships at the harbor alongside recreational boats. Today the club has about 150 members, six of whom are “live-aboards,” boaters who actually live on their boats — not a bad deal for $295 a month.
Because the club owns the harbor, they’re responsible for one of the less glamorous aspects of yacht club maintenance: dredging mud from the bottom that accumulates over time and making getting in or out of the harbor difficult for boats. The Aeolian harbor’s next dredging — the last one was done in 2015 — is slated for June at a cost of about $1 million. While a common interest in boating is what attracts new members to the Aeolian, the camaraderie is what keeps them in the fold.
“My dad joined when he was 9,” says Kathy Boothby, 71, the club’s vice commodore. “He sailed with the founder. And then he brought my mom here on their first date at age 17. So I’ve been coming here my entire life. When I retired I thought I would give back.”
Boothby lives nearby on the water but does not own a boat and doesn’t want to, not because it’s too expensive either.
“It’s the maintenance. If you have a wood boat, anything that’s in water, you can’t just have it sit. You actually have to take it out and run the engines.”
The expenses of owning, maintaining, fueling and paying for a boat’s berth are not just issues for longtime members, though. They also affect newcomers.
“All our new members are kayakers and paddle boarders. They can’t afford boats,” says Kolinsky, a retired printer and Vietnam War veteran who was the Aeolian’s commodore in 1997. Still, he says the club is the “best kept secret in Alameda.”
Another member, Francis Hoffmeyer, says today’s boats are out of reach for most young people. He says that in the mid-1990s boats were built in the 28- to 30-foot range.
“Now they’re 50 to 60 feet. That tells you who’s buying these boats.”
One of the club’s newest younger members is Emma Williams, 32. Undeterred by boat prices or maintenance, she joined last October and is the proud owner of a 24-foot Bristol sailboat that also has a propellor. She says a stimulus check from President Trump’s first administration helped her buy it.
Williams says she has sailed her boat to Mazatlan, Mexico, and regularly takes it out on the bay and to other clubs. She plans to sail to the Farallon Islands and Seattle. When she’s not braving the high seas, Williams also performs solo as a punk musician in Bay Area clubs.
The Alamedan learned to sail on Lake Merritt and has outfitted her boat with a wind-powered generator that helps with the electrical load. She does all the maintenance herself and has applied to be a live-aboard at the Aeolian, currently living just a few blocks away.
“I first started asking about this club because it’s the closest one to where I grew up,” says Williams. “There’s all these helpful people. I didn’t expect the support that I got and the excitement that people have that I’m going out and sailing. I’m getting around.”
For more information about the Aeolian Yacht Club visit their website at aeolianyc.org.
Paul Kilduff is a San Francisco-based writer who also draws cartoons. He can be reached at pkilduff350@gmail.com.