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 learn sailing, 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 over-night, from simple weekend get-always to multi-day adventures to the annual Norfolk Harborfest (spring) and the Baltimore Schooner Race (fall)
- Racing opportunities spanning the spectrum from informal small boat races, to local week-day evening race series, to medium-distance Chesapeake Bay races, and the famous over-night Governor’s Cup
- Social Sails, where the sailing is secondary to the socializing, the food and drink is discussed more than the wind, and the sunsets are always memorable. Social Sails are offered at an unbelievably low nominal 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, Fouled Anchor Race, Pirate Raid, Christmas Parade of Lights, Sailing Fever Banquet, etc.)
But the best part is the people you will meet, sail with, learn from, and help to grow in turn. 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 people 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 and citizenship (leave the boat better than you found it, please!) there are no absolute requirements. We ask only that you participate more as a club “member” than an MWR “customer,” and that you contribute something in whatever way you can, whenever you can. There is no volunteer hours requirement, but almost everyone volunteers in some capacity.
We have monthly meetings to share information, plan events and improve the club’s operations, and smaller more specialized meetings and work parties for things like training, cruising, racing, or to perform simple maintenance on the boats. Our members’ ideas 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 met yet.
Contact any of the officers listed under “who we are,” or stop by any club meeting the second Saturday of every month (details elsewhere on this site) or just go click on “Join NPSC!” right now!
