When you join the Navy Patuxent Sailing Club (NPSC), you will have access to a fleet of great boats for you to sail, your own clubhouse, a picturesque marina with a large basin to learn and practice, directly on a beautiful river with coves and towns and other marinas and restaurants for you to visit, opening onto a majestic bay where you can cruise to distant locations and ever greater adventures! Your club can be a place for you to improve your basic sailing abilities, hone your more subtle techniques, increase your overall confidence on the water, and share your knowledge with others. What would that be worth?
Your Navy Patuxent Sailing Club is like no other. Hosted on the Patuxent Naval Air Station, your club enjoys the support the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation organization and infrastructure. When combined with the enthusiasm and dedication of NPSC’s all-volunteer leadership, administration, instruction, and maintenance, this allows the club to offer you tremendous benefits at costs a mere fraction of what you might pay to rent a for-profit boat, or purchase and maintain your own boat, or the even the costs to sail with another club with a different support structure.
Here is a summary of the benefits of Club membership:
· Access to a wide variety of boats, large and small, well suited for experienced and novice sailors alike, ready for a wide variety of different sailing adventures
· Great instruction and learning, including world-recognized ASA instruction and certification, NPSC-specific large-boat training, and ubiquitous informal coaching at all levels
· Convenient boat reservation and checkout systems, open to all club members 24/7
· Convenient all-inclusive on-line billing for boat rental, club membership, instruction, and other events
· You do not need any certification, training, or experience to sail with us (only to act as “Skipper”)
· Significant opportunities to include non-member guests in most club sails and events
· Cruising on large boats -- whether over-night or a long weekend get-alway-- we live in one of the best cruising grounds in the world
· Special multi-day adventures such as the annual Norfolk Harborfest (June) and the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race (October), Skippers will spend the night on the hook and then hang out and watch the start of the race or participate in a tall-ship parade of sail.
· Racing opportunities spanning the spectrum from informal small boat races to local Southern Maryland Sailing Association (SMSA) Keelboat races (short to medium-distance Chesapeake Bay races), and the famous over-night Maryland Governor’s Cup race from Annapolis to St. Mary's City.
· Social Sails, where sailing is secondary to socializing, members share food and drink while leisurely sailing to what wind is available to watch sunsets and make special memories! Social Sails are offered at a very reasonable participation fee
· Continuing education programs on topics like small boat racing, boat systems, sail trim, navigation, weather, safety, etc.
· Many annual special events (Open House, Pirate Raid, Solomons Holiday Parade of Lights, Sailing Fever Banquet, etc.)
But the best part is the people you will meet, sail with, learn from, and help grow as a sailor and a person. Sailing is fundamentally a team sport like no other, and whether in friendly competition or heart-felt camaraderie, you might search the high seas a great many seasons and never discover a better group of people to sail with.
You will find a group of veterans, civil servants and federal contractors who share a passion for sailing and collectively strive to foster safety and seamanship in all we do. But also people who truly enjoy the wind and the water, and work together in constant pursuit of the real reason we sail: fun.
What do we ask in return? Besides the modest annual membership fee and good sportsmanship / citizenship, we ask you give of yourself as you receive--helping out on one or two maintenance projects each year to keep the boats seaworthy. Anyone with base access is eligible to join, but instead of being “just a customer” we ask that you contribute something in whatever way you can, whenever you can. There are no volunteer hours requirements, but the more members that help, the fewer tasks those the help out most have to do.
We have monthly membership meetings to share information, plan events and improve the club’s operations. Further, we have several smaller committee meetings (Racing, Social and Training) and semi-annual maintenance parties to perform required, periodic maintenance on the boats. Our members skills and participation are valued, and that is why your club can be so much more than a place to rent a boat. This is truly a club where you will find no strangers, just shipmates you haven’t yet met.
Contact any of the officers listed under “who we are,” or stop by any club meeting the second Saturday every month (details elsewhere on this site) or just go click on “Member Signup” right now!
We look forward to seeing or sailing with you soon.