West Mersea Yacht Club has its clubhouse in Coast Road, West Mersea, Mersea Island, Essex. It is on the estuary of the River Blackwater, 20 minutes by road from Colchester. The Blackwater estuary is a major sailing centre with possibly the best sailing conditions on the English east coast.
Founded in 1899, the club has sponsored national (United Kingdom) and international yacht racing meetings. The club has competitive offshore racing fleets and run racing throughout the UK sailing season, a cadet week and an annual regatta during 'Mersea Week'. Of its many famous members, the most notable was probably Maurice Griffiths, the yacht designer and author.
A club launch runs from Tuesdays to Sundays during the season; callsign on VHF Channel 37: YC1 (Why - See - One).
The WMYC ensign is the Red Ensign defaced with the Essex symbol (3 seaxes).
Famous quotes containing the words west, yacht and/or club:
“It is said that a carpenter building a summer hotel here ... declared that one very clear day he picked out a ship coming into Portland Harbor and could distinctly see that its cargo was West Indian rum. A county historian avers that it was probably an optical delusion, the result of looking so often through a glass in common use in those days.”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I’ve given parties that have made Indian rajahs green with envy. I’ve had prima donnas break $10,000 engagements to come to my smallest dinners. When you were still playing button back in Ohio, I entertained on a cruising trip that was so much fun that I had to sink my yacht to make my guests go home.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)