In 1966, Cedar Point Yacht Club packed up its Compo Basin clubhouse and moved down the shoreline to Bluff Point, at the east end of Saugatuck Shores, where it still races today. The building it left behind at Compo Beach did not sit empty for long. A new group of neighbors moved in almost immediately, and what they built there has quietly become the most accessible piece of boating culture on this stretch of water, even though most of its members have never owned a boat.
That is the part of the story that gets buried in most Westport waterfront write-ups. People who already live in Saugatuck Shores tend to know there are yacht clubs nearby. Fewer know that the club with the least exclusive-sounding name is the one throwing open its doors, while the two with harbor and point pedigree run on membership funnels that take longer than a summer to clear. And this year, the easiest club to join is celebrating six decades in a building that is running on generator power.
A Clubhouse Changes Hands
When Cedar Point Yacht Club vacated its Compo Basin building in 1966, the space became home to Minuteman Yacht Club, a new organization whose founders named it for the Revolutionary War patriots who once defended this same shoreline. The club is now marking its 60th anniversary, and its defining feature has not changed since the beginning: you do not need a boat, or even a Westport address, to join.
Board member Linda Mezzullo puts it plainly when describing what the club actually is.
"We are a vibrant, welcoming community of individuals who enjoy social gatherings, and the coastal lifestyle that makes Westport summers so special."
Minuteman's calendar runs on Commissioning Day as a season kickoff, a reception after the annual King's Cup Race, and a rotation of clambakes, cocktail parties, and sunset gatherings through the warm months. Membership skews toward adults, singles and couples in particular, though families are welcome, and the club's affiliation with the Yachting Club of America gives members reciprocal privileges at more than 700 clubs nationwide. A beach sticker is not required to attend events at the clubhouse, which the town now owns and has named for former Board of Finance chair Ned Dimes. Outside groups can even rent it for their own gatherings.
Two Older Clubs, Two Slower Doors
Contrast that with the neighborhood's other two clubs, both of which trace their roots to the 1800s and both of which run on invitation rather than open enrollment.
Cedar Point Yacht Club is the elder of the two, founded in 1887 as one of the first 40 yacht clubs established on the Eastern seaboard. It spent 1932 to 1966 at the Compo Basin building that later became Minuteman's home, then relocated to its current address at 1 Bluff Point once the club outgrew the old space. Racing is the point of Cedar Point, not socializing around it. The club fields nine racing classes, including Flying Scots, Lasers, Lightnings, Stars, Thistles, and Vanguards, but its Atlantic-class fleet, active since the 1950s and currently numbering 15 boats, is the busiest of the group, with racing scheduled from Memorial Day through Labor Day most Saturdays and Sundays.
Saugatuck Harbor Yacht Club, founded in 1959 at the mouth of the Saugatuck River, sits on the more social end of the private-club spectrum, with 200 member families sharing 160 slips in a fleet split almost evenly between sail and power. Its clubhouse has its own story worth knowing: the building is a restored Queen Anne structure that started life in 1887, the same year Cedar Point was founded, as the carriage barn and stable for the Eno estate. The Eno in question was one of Cedar Point's founding members, which means the two oldest clubs on this stretch of water share a family thread even though one club's clubhouse used to shelter horses for the other's founder. Saugatuck Harbor keeps traditions like a Halloween Party where costumed members parade dock to dock, a Snapper Tournament, and more than twenty years of Santa arriving by Boston Whaler for the holiday party. None of that changes the fact that new members typically arrive through a sponsor who invites them to club activities first, a process that unfolds over a season rather than a single application.
A 60th Birthday on Generator Power
Here is where the timing gets specific to this summer. The Compo Beach marina that Minuteman calls home, officially Ned Dimes Marina, is in the middle of a $2.5 million infrastructure overhaul that Westport's Representative Town Meeting approved to replace piers, walkways, a fuel dock, and electrical switchgear that Public Works Director Peter Ratkiewich described as infrastructure over 30 years old and showing signs of fatigue. The project was expected to wrap by spring 2026, and much of it has. The construction barge came off the site in early June, and the launch ramp reopened on June 15.
Full electrical service has not caught up with the rest of the work. Modifications required by Eversource pushed back permanent power, so the town approved a generator bypass to keep the marina's electrical panel running through the season. According to a June 2026 update, the generator will stay in place for the entire 2026 boating season, with full electrical service not expected until the start of the 2027 season. That means Minuteman's 60th anniversary calendar, the clambakes, the sunset gatherings, the King's Cup reception, is running on borrowed power in the exact building where the club has operated since 1966.
A few practical notes if you have an event on the calendar there this summer:
- Hosts should check in at the Compo Beach entrance gate on arrival, where staff assist with generator startup and building connections.
- The clubhouse, Camp Compo, and the lighting at the Compo basketball courts are all sharing the same bypass system.
- Full restoration of standard electrical service is tied to the 2027 season, not this one.
What the Building Says About the Block
The pattern underneath all of this is worth sitting with. Say the words "yacht club" and most people picture a velvet-rope version of boating, the kind of place where membership is inherited more than earned. On this particular stretch of Westport shoreline, that assumption runs backward. The two clubs with the oldest names and the most polished histories, Cedar Point and Saugatuck Harbor, are the ones that ask for a sponsor and a season of showing up before they ask for dues. The club with the least glamorous name, formed almost as an afterthought when a building came open, is the one where a beach sticker gets you in the door and a boat is optional.
That inversion is not an accident of branding. It is a direct result of a 1966 relocation that emptied one clubhouse and filled it with a different kind of organization, one built around people rather than boats from day one. Sixty years later, the town still owns that building, still rents part of the marina's summer to the public, and is still, this particular season, running the whole operation on a generator while it finishes catching the wiring up to the rest of the work. For anyone who already lives near this water, that is the kind of detail that explains more about the neighborhood's actual social structure than any listing description ever will.
If you are weighing what a home near this stretch of the Saugatuck River or Long Island Sound actually connects you to, from private slips to public marinas to sixty years of club history, The Riverside Realty Group can walk you through it property by property. Book an appointment when you are ready to talk specifics.
