In the Coachella Valley, someone started a yacht club.
A yacht club.
In the desert.
In the middle of Rancho Mirage sit a couple manmade lakes where, by all logic, there should just be sand and lizards. So naturally, residents saw those lakes in 1991 and said, “Y’know what this needs? Pontoons.”
And burgee flags.
And a commodore.
So the Lake Mirage Yacht Club was born.
Though I’m not a member, nor a sailor (nor even a guy who’s particularly good at swimming), when I heard about this unique club I had to find out more. With the valley currently growing and shifting, things like this are exactly how random people can come together to become a real community.
Apparently, the Lake Mirage Yacht Club began as just some shared pontoon boats that needed scheduling, maintenance, and insurance. That’s a spreadsheet problem. But this is the Coachella Valley, and we don’t solve problems with the bare minimum. We solve them with clubs and fun and giving people regal naval titles.
Today, the club, located at the Lake Mirage Racquet Club community, oversees three electric pontoons, puttering at a max speed generously described as “gentle.” But now membership is almost 100 neighbors, a mix of full timers and seasonal residents who traded coastal fog for dry summers, but apparently are still called by the irresistible siren song of the seas.
You’d expect the club’s commodore to be the kind of guy who has an oil painting of himself while wearing a Napoleon hat. But instead, Commodore Jack Silver’s unbridled avuncular energy distracts you from realizing that his birth name is the same as Long John Silver’s.
Like the pirate, Jack was an actual sea captain. Which means that somewhere in his past are actual oceans, real swells, and seagulls, not snowbirds. But even in retirement he still gives pointers on life jacket protocol and proper handling of a dock cleat.
Jack led the club’s annual luncheon (held this year at the Agua Caliente casino in Rancho Mirage) which revealed to me just how far this quirky idea has sailed. There were raffles. There were bottles of Prosecco handed out like treasure. They played “Buoy, That’s a Great Song, ”a Name That Tune game limited strictly to surf pop and yacht rock, played with the intensity of competing in the America’s Cup.
The club built an online store selling LMYC hats and tiny boat flags. Because if you are going to have a yacht club in the desert, you might as well be rocking a branded polo shirt.
Some people might roll their eyes. A luncheon and three pontoons on a couple manmade lakes doesn’t exactly evoke the Nantucket world of waterproof ascots.
But the Coachella Valley has always been a place that bends reality a little.
We built golf courses out of sand dunes.
World-famous music festivals on an empty field.
An observatory in our Library!
We always take what shouldn’t exist and somehow make it thrive.
So a yacht club where none should be isn’t absurd. It’s aspirational.
It’s the kind of energy that keeps this valley afloat.
To that I say: anchors aweigh, Lake Mirage Yacht Club!Eric Cunningham is a resident of Rancho Mirage, and certified landlubber. He can be reached at cunningham.eric@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: A yacht club in Rancho Mirage desert? Makes sense to us
Reporting by Eric Cunningham, Special to The Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
