Welcome to the Blue Valley Yacht Club
Sailing in Kansas? If you have never tried it, don’t laugh. Tuttle Creek Lake provides the sailor with about 17 square miles of water, prevailing southwest winds averaging 12 to 15 knots, bright blue skies, and no crowds.
For more than 50 years, sailors in the Manhattan area have been organized in the Blue Valley Yacht Club (BVYC). We have our own private dock, moorings for keel boats, a fenced dinghy park for smaller boats, a private boat ramp, a boat lift, a mast hoist and a picnic shelter. The Blue Valley Yacht Club has an active social program. We start the season with an Annual Burning of our Winter Socks on the Vernal Equinox to drive away the evil spirts of winter. The Sock Burning is followed up in a month with our Spring Launch Party held in conjunction with a workday to clean up the club grounds in preparation for the summer sailing season. Throughout the sailing season there are volunteer workdays to keep the grounds up and fees down. There are monthly parties at the club shelter and we close out our social season with an Annual Banquet and Meeting. During the winter our sailors meet on the second Saturday of the month for coffee and sailing conversation.
We have a full racing schedule. There are two long distance races, the Scott Liebler Memorial Day Weekend Race and the Marty and Harriet Ottenheimer Labor Day Weekend Race. In between those races there are two series of Round the Buoy Races, first the Chapman Series and then the Ken Conrow Series. Both the long distances races and each of the Round the Buoy series have their own traveling trophies for the winners.
We sponsor youth sailing and youth sail training through our association with the Blue Valley Youth Sailing Foundation and the Boy Scouts of America. The youth sailing foundation offers both basic sail training in Opti Prams and more advanced sailing in Sunfish and Flying Juniors. The Boy Scouts hold an event every August on our grounds for boys and girls, called Kansas Sea Base, teaching various boating merit badges. We also make our facilities available to the Kansas State University Sailing Team for training.