San Diego Yacht Club Brings Home The Gold

The San Diego Yacht Club brings home the gold in more than just the Olympics; its newly completed $10-million renovation is LEED Gold certified. A member of the San Diego Port’s Green Business Network, the Club also teaches its junior sailors not only about sailing but about stewardship and conservation. Phoebe Chongchua from Live Fit Magazine has the story about how the San Diego Yacht Club is an environmentally friendly San Diego Port tenant.

Video Transcript

San Diego Yacht Club Brings Home The Gold

Phoebe Chongchua, LiveFitMagazine.com: Since its beginning in 1886, The San Diego Yacht Club, principally, along with other local yacht clubs, has had more sailing olympic medalists and world champions than any other city in the world.

Kyle C. Clark, Commodore, San Diego Yacht Club: Some of our Olympic medalists: Dennis Conner, Lowell North, Charlie Rogers, Robby Haines, Brian Ledbetter, J.J. Fetter…

PC: And the list goes on…I sailed with Commodore Kyle Clark who explained it’s a testament to the true quality of the Club’s program for juniors.

Kyle: What we’re teaching them is how to be self-sufficient.

PC: The club is instilling core values and principles, among them “a sense of responsibility in everything they do.” Kids of all ages take to the water on a mission to learn about sailing.

Kyle: A lot of that lesson is contained in the whole green movement–conservation, trying to sustain the environment–and we’re running our regattas as well as our business that way.

PC: It’s not just in the Olympics that the Club has taken home the Gold. The Club’s recent 10-million renovation earned this building a LEED Gold certification.

Kyle: As a condition to the renewal of our Port lease, we have to replace all of the buildings on our property in as-new or new condition. So we embarked on a complete rebuild of three of our buildings.

PC: The locker buildings, Junior Clubhouse, and maintenance structure.

Kyle: One of our goals with the new project was to be environmentally conscious. We designed it using as few lights as possible. If you look at this building ( to our building on the other side) there are windows everywhere.  The spine is all glass. The goal is to not have to turn on any lights during the day. There’re no synthetic materials here. It’s all wood. We’ve done everything we can to impact the environment as little as possible in every stage of the design.

PC: Solar-heating the showers, high-efficiency lighting for the tennis courts and parking lot, and a much-improved computerized air conditioning system are paying off for the San Diego Yacht Club economically and in community leadership through the Port’s Green Business Network.

Kyle: The overall economic payback through energy efficiency, cost savings on our monthly bills, and then any sort of help we could get through the state or SDG&E, really helped in every aspect when we were trying to figure out the best way to approach a given issue. Being part of the Green Business Network allows us to educate ourselves as to what we can do better, do more efficiently. We’re one of the first clubs that built a building like this. So we’re able to share what we’re learning with the other yacht clubs as they go about their programs and now we’re consulting with some of the other Port tenants.

PC: A sign of the San Diego Yacht Club’s good sportsmanship and camaraderie. From Pt. Loma, I’m Phoebe Chongchua for Live Fit Magazine.

Editor’s note: This segment made possible by SDG&E and The Port of San Diego’s Green Business Network.