If you don’t own your own boat, but would like to be part of a racing crew, the Crew Bank is a great place to start.

There are two types of crewbank, Racing (more enthusiastic) and Day Sailing (more relaxed).

Murray Gainer, ABYC’s Crew Bank Coordinator, will be happy to help you find a spot on a racing boat (if that is what you are looking for) for our weekly Tuesday and Thursday Club race nights and weekend regattas. You can reach Murray via email or you can go directly to the Racing Crew Bank registration page and sign up.

Daysailing is also available and comes at a much more relaxed pace.

Each spring, shortly after Launch in late April or early May, we hold our annual Crew Bank Night – an informative, social evening, designed to introduce novice and seasoned sailors alike to ABYC and our racing program. You’ll receive information on everything you’ll need to know – from the gear and clothing required to working with the Race Committee. There will be people on hand to answer questions about crewing on an ABYC racing yacht and the many advantages of Club membership. It’s a great opportunity to meet ABYC members and racing skippers and to see if crewing is for you.

Crew Bank Night 2013 will be held Thursday, May 2 at 7 pm. Contact Murray for more information.

Please note that to crew on an ABYC yacht, you should be a member of the Club. Associate membership fees are very reasonable and allow access to a variety of Club facilities and activities. For more information, please see the Membership Section.

If you have little or no sailing experience, you might consider taking the Adult Keelboat Course offered at ABYC. This course provides an invaluable introduction to the fundamentals of sailing and, though it isn’t mandatory to crew at ABYC, you (and your future crewmates) will find the experience much more enjoyable if you have acquired some basic sailing skills and knowledge of terms and equipment. The course fee also includes your first season’s Associate membership.

If you would like more information about the Crew Bank and the crewing experience before deciding to join ABYC, feel free to contact Murray.

Note also that you can access the crewbank essentially by just turning up in Duffy’s Lounge on the second floor of the club, ready to sail, on any given Tuesday or Thursday evening throughout the sailing season.  This is a great way to try out racing before making a commitment for the entire season, or to try out more than one boat before deciding to sail regularly with a given crew.  In order to manage numbers it would be helpful to let Murray know by email of your intention to come, but it’s a first-come, first-served system, and we try our hardest to accommodate everyone turning out.  This system operates throughout the sailing season.

Online Daysailing Crewbank

To make it easier for people who don’t have their own boat to engage in non-race sailing, ABYC has created a crewbank specifically for daysailing. This area is for ABYC members (User ID required) to sign up for the opportunity to sail as well as to search for other members who want to go sailing. Please follow this link to access the Daysailing Crewbank section.

Online Racing Crewbank

ABYC has reintroduced a crewbank specifically for racing. This area is for people to sign up as crew to sail and for ABYC skippers to search for people who want to go sailing. Please follow this link to access the Racing Crewbank section.