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Originally Posted by 5hortBu5
I'd love to get to know some folks at a club and start crewing. I'm just not sure how to go about it. The closest club to me, The Riverton Yacht Club, has a pretty steep membership fee. Do I really need to drop close to a grand for the privilege of bugging people for boat rides, or am I doing it wrong?
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I'm finding the club I am looking to get involved with is pretty casual with "walk-on" crew. They hold casual Tuesday night races and people who aren't member of the club show up and offer themselves as crew. Sometimes they get a ride, sometimes they don't. Obviously, a club prefers someone to commit to membership but if you're polite and understand that invitations are at the discretion of the members/owners, you'll probably get to go out fairly regularly.
Contact your local club and ask them if they are ok with you coming out, meeting some folks and helping out. Given that most clubs require you to be sponsored in by existing members anyway, you'll need to go through this process whether or not you ultimately join. I think it is deliberate, a form of filter to weed out casual folks from those who want to be members. Each club culture is different.
Barring that, wander the docks of the local marinas and stop and talk to folks sitting on their boats. Ask what kind of boat it is, how they got started, where the like to sail and so on. Sometimes you'll be invited out.
Join internet groups for specific boats or areas. There are several for the Chesapeake Bay, for example, with owners and non-owners alike. Owners on the group are usually quite willing to bring out non-owners. I did that for years before I owned a boat. The best boat is always someone else's.
There are lots of ways to go about it. A grand is actually pretty cheap for a club membership assuming it doesn't include an initiation fee.
Matt