An old fish store has become home to Nova Scotia’s newest yacht club.
Riley Schnare of Chester and his good friend Taylor Shaw founded the club this year with 34 members and hope to hold at least one set of races this season.
“A few years ago, we had been hoping to buy a piece of land on Big Tancook Island through a tax auction, but on the last day the owners had to pay their taxes before it would go to auction, they paid them, so we didn’t get it,” said the 31-year-old Schnare, who has been sailing for about 20 years.
“So we kept our eyes open and last summer, one of the local fisherman mentioned that he was selling his fish store on Little Tancook and we were like, ‘Perfect, we’ll buy that.’ So once we did that, we thought it might be fun to open a yacht club, because a lot of our friends are racers and we thought it’d be a cool place for them to go.”
Schnare’s uncle was involved in a yacht club in Deep Cove near Chester, so that was a source of inspiration for him once the property became theirs.
“I contacted Sail Nova Scotia, and they said that all you need is 10 members at $40 a head,” said Schnare. “You don’t even need a building. They have some members that are virtual clubs.”
Schnare said they will be renovating the building to turn it into a clubhouse and would like to host as many as two events this year, with racing followed by a social get-together.
“We’ll see where it goes,” said Schnare. “We don’t even have walls put up yet. The building didn’t have any windows in it, so I bought a couple of those and got them installed. I also bought a couple of floats and there’s a 10-foot bar that we’re going to put in, and there’s other stuff we want to do.
“Step 1 is to get the work done to the building. Step 2 is to try and get at least one successful event off this year and then we’ll see what happens. It’s just a place for all our friends to have to go to in Mahone Bay if they want to sail or just to hang out.”
Schnare said membership would cost $60 for the year and that adding more members will depend on whether a car ferry from Blandford to Big Tancook will be completed.
“If that doesn’t happen, the only way to get there will be by a shuttle boat,” said Schnare. “So it probably won’t grow much beyond just having a place for friends to go. If enough people who join have boats, maybe we can do some club races, but again, these are all things for down the road.
“The goal is to grow it over time, but we need to get the work done first.”
