"It's bit like sailing in the ocean, I think," said Darin Christensen, race chair and vice commodore for the club. "You have to treat it somewhat like the ocean."

While racing is a primary objective for the GSL Yachting Club, it also serves other functions for its members. The club hosts socials and dinners. It also offers a cruising program that gives participants a chance to tour various parts of the Great Salt Lake.

One of the club's biggest events is its annual Sailfest — an outreach program that each summer features boat racing, sail painting, a dinner and live bands.

All of these things help to make it into a tight-knit community for local sailing enthusiasts.

"When we're out on the race course, we're absolute competitors," Shearer said. "When we come back off the race course, for the most part, yeah, we're all good friends."

Still, the biggest challenge facing the GSL Yachting Club is retaining and expanding its membership. In the past decade, the surface level of the lake has dropped 8 1/2 feet from 4204 feet above sea level to 4195 1/2 feet. In the same span, the club has lost about 25 percent of its active members once some of the larger boats could no longer get in and out of a shallower marina.

"The shallowness has caused a drop in membership," Christensen said. "There's not as many people out here as there has been in the past."

The GSL Yachting Club has taken some steps to combat dropping lake levels. It recently spent $40,000 to dredge the mouth of the marina to give better clearance for keels on various boats. It took 2 1/2 days, and it required the use of power shovels and a shrimping barge to remove enough silt to give the marina better depth.

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E-mail: jcoon@desnews.com