With the introduction of Dragon Bay Club, competition and opportunities for sailors and water-sports enthusiasts may amp up in the foreseeable future.
The new club was officially launched on Thursday, 5 Jan., at its proposed location off the North Sound, opposite the golf club.
Alun Davies, who will serve as the new club’s commodore, told the Cayman Compass that the property stretches across three-and-a-half acres, which includes a beach and a boat dock off a canal.
“I started talking to Dart about a space,” Davies said. “We looked around and then two years ago I found this area and spoke with Dart, and they said ‘Yes, we will let you have this land”.
For decades, the Cayman Islands Sailing Club has been the lone entity of this stature. However, with Dragon Bay Club joining the mix, Davies said the island should have more people getting involved.
“We’ve had one club here… and it does a fantastic job, but we still never had more than 20 kids on the water each weekend, and we’ve put thousands of kids through it,” Davies explained.
He added that Bermuda has seven clubs with 140 sailors, despite having the same population as Cayman, noting that he wants to try and “repeat that dynamic”.
“Each club will probably double and probably triple the number of adults and kids who experience sailing,” he said.
National sailors Ava Hider and Charlotte Webster were among many who turned out for the new club’s launch.
Speaking with the Compass, Webster said she is looking forward to all that Dragon Bay Club brings on board.
“Having a club that’s closer to West Bay brings a lot of opportunities for other people,” she said. “Hopefully, it will offer more competition for me, and it would be good to see future events with club-versus-club racing.”
While Dragon Bay Club will be based around sailing, Davies said it will also feature other water-sports like paddle boarding, kayaking and surfing in its many forms.
The additional sports have drawn the attention of Hider, who will make a transition to wingsurfing.
“I’m excited,” Hider said. “It will bring new perspectives into the sport.”
For now, the club will be working on increasing its memberships and, according to Davies, begin renovation with hopes of finishing by the end of 2023.
“We are trying to get more people with enthusiasm and build up a committee,” he said. “We want to put a planning application in for a 60×60 square dock… and we have to put fencing in and clear a little bit of the land.
“We will put a bar in, and it will be called Dragon’s Den. It all depends on the sponsorships we get and what members contribute… In the summer we hope to do some teaching with the kids, paddle boarding, windsurfing, kayaking and sailing… but Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
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