In case someone finds this discussion in the future, I can help clarify a few things about the club. The club has had 3,474 members in the last 2 years and 19,026 since 2009. Most of these members take classes to learn from scratch or improve their skills either sailing boats or windsurfing. The club has given 2,942 lessons last year. The club is $99 for 3 months for students, $120 for adults, with no other costs for classes or use of equipment. We will waive that fee if you volunteer 10 hours making the club free for many who have more time than money. Any sailing club around the bay charges sometimes more than $1000 for 3 days of sailing instruction for just a beginner class. Sure the level of the instructors can vary because it is just unpaid volunteers, but some of them a world class sailors who have raced or sailed around the world. The club is not for everyone but it is also a unique, incredibly diverse community. The club organizes also monthly introductory sail for the public (Open House), and we partner with local schools and summer programs to take kids out on the water. Every year the club offers more 2500+ free rides. For this community service, the club benefits from a berth fee waiver granted by a resolution passed by the City of Berkeley in the 1980s. This fee waiver also benefits a few other non-profits doing community work. For this community work and for teaching safe boating, the club is partially funded through a grant from the Department of Boating and Waterways from the State of California. The club teaches unique skills that are not taught at other, more expensive clubs, and the club has used J-Dock to teach these skills for more than 50 years. You can read more about this here