photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World photo

Travis Andregg, Erin Carbrey and Peter Meiusi are the founders of the new No Coast Boat Club that will open this spring at the Clinton Lake Marina.

If you have been a boater long enough, you’ve probably heard that the word “boat” actually is an acronym: Break Out Another Thousand. There are lots of things to go wrong on a boat that are expensive to fix and that usually happen at the wrong time.

But, when it goes right, a day on the water can be tough to beat. A new set of owners at the Clinton Lake Marina are starting a new business venture that aims to create more days of smooth sailing for would-be skippers.

The idea is a boat club, where people essentially buy into a boat subscription service.

“We are trying to deliver something that is hassle-free boating,” said Peter Meiusi, who is a co-owner of the Clinton Lake Marina and one of three founders of the No Coast Boat Club, which will open this spring.

Meiusi is opening the boat club with his fiancee and marina co-owner Erin Carbrey and longtime marina manager Travis Andregg.

But what the heck is a boat club? Essentially, it is a system where you pay a one-time initiation fee and then a monthly fee thereafter in exchange for being able to reserve time on a fleet of boats that will be docked at Clinton Lake Marina.

The club owns the boats, meaning that the club is responsible for all maintenance and other such costs like insurance and winter storage. Club members simply have to show up and boat. They will do that by using an online reservation system to book pre-determined blocks of time.

“The software we are using will allow you to say ‘I want the boat on this day, and a bag of ice and a case of beer,’ and it will all be waiting for you when you arrive,” Meiusi said.

In case you are wondering, a boat club isn’t a new idea. It is just new to Lawrence. There are a handful of national boat club chains, with Freedom Boat Club being the largest. It has locations all over the coasts, with its closest location to Kansas being at the Lake of the Ozarks.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World photo

The Clinton Lake Marina, pictured Jan. 6, 2022, will be the site of the new No Coast Boat Club this fall. The club will be a subscription boat service that allows members to use a boat on a regular basis without owning the boat.

Meiusi and Carbrey decided to bring the concept to Clinton Lake after moving to Lawrence from Seattle and completing a deal to buy the marina in September. Carbrey is the niece of former marina owner Megan Hiebert. As such, Carbrey, who grew up in Lawrence, spent many a summer working at the marina.

When she was looking for a job at the beginning of the pandemic, Hiebert reached out to her, and Carbrey began to remember how much fun working at the marina was.

“People who come to the marina are generally happy,” she said of the fun atmosphere. “It is our job to make sure they stay happy.”

As for Andregg, he has been an employee at the marina for 17 years, and wanted to become involved in the boat club venture because he likes the idea of providing a high level of service to a smaller group of people. He said the boat club initially will limit membership to about 20 families, which will allow the boat club staff the ability to give a “country club style” of service to each member.

The trio is still finalizing some other details on the business, which has a basic website operating at nocoastboatclub.com. Meiusi said plans call for the boat club to start off with three brand new boats: a wakeboard boat that seats eight; a large crossover sport/leisure pontoon-style boat that seats 13; and a fishing boat that seats eight.

Meiusi said the tentative pricing plan calls for a one-time initiation fee of about $5,000, with monthly payments of $399 per month. He thinks that should be a good value, given that the $5,000 initiation fee is tens of thousands of dollars less than what you would spend for a new boat, and the $399 per month likely would be less than a boat owner would spend on a slip rental, winter storage, insurance and other incidentals.

The group is still finalizing how many hours per week members would be entitled to use the boats. Meiusi said the idea is to create a system where each family would be able to use a boat at least once every weekend, and people who have availability to boat on weekdays likely would be able to reserve a boat many times per week.

Eventually, Meiusi, who was a finance executive in Seattle before moving to Lawrence, said No Coast Boat Club hopes to expand to other marinas in the region, which would then allow members to boat at multiple lakes.

The boat club is one part of a plan to expand the marina. Meiusi said engineers currently are looking at how the marina can add to its 580 wet slips. All of those on-the-water slips are fully rented for the season. The marina has added about 50,000 square feet of additional on-land storage space for boats, which now allows the marina to store about 300 boats on shore.

“With the boat club, we think there is a huge market for people who like boating, but maybe don’t want to commit to buying a boat,” he said.

Meiusi and Carbrey also think there is a large market of people who just want to come out to the lake and will use the marina in various ways to enjoy the outdoors. That may be fishing from the shore, having a slice of pizza on the dock, or coming to events that the couple hope to add this summer.

Meiusi said the marina is working on partnerships with some local breweries and also is planning on hosting some live music during the busy summer months.

“Our intention is to not only serve the boating community, but the greater community of Lawrence,” he said. “We really want to make this a community destination.”