Three Times a Lady: For the First Time, The Commodores at the 3 Local Yacht Clubs Are All Women
From left, Wendi Powers (YCSH), Pati Gaull (YCSIC) and Michele Lynch (AYC).
For the first time in history, three women are the commodores at the same time at the yacht clubs in Avalon, Stone Harbor, and Sea Isle City.
The commodore is the principal flag officer at the clubs and is responsible for things like presiding over meetings, providing leadership and management, overseeing club activities, representing the club, and dealing with membership.
One must be a board member and then must first become a rear commodore, then a vice commodore, then a commodore.
The women – Wendi Powers (Yacht Club of Stone Harbor), Pati Gaull (Yacht Club of Sea Isle City), and Michele Lynch (Avalon Yacht Club) – are all married mothers who have worked in the corporate world and obviously have a love and passion for the Jersey Shore. Two of the women are retired and live at the shore full time, and Lynch resides in North Jersey but spends much of the summer with her family in Sea Isle City.
“When we found out there were going to be three female commodores, we were elated,” Gaull says. “We thought, ‘This is awesome.’ We didn’t think it had ever happened before. I just think it’s wonderful to have three women at the same time at the helm. I think it’s wonderful. I think it kind of speaks volumes to how we’ve grown. I am the eighth [female] commodore in the history of the Yacht Club of Sea Isle City.”
The Tribute
On June 20, the Yacht Club of Stone Harbor hosted an historic event called Commodores’ Tribute to the Ladies.
It was a way of honoring these three female commodores who have made history, while also celebrating the other ladies at the three clubs and having a night of camaraderie and togetherness.
“When we met, we had lunch together,” Gaull says. “When we had lunch, we were just so elated that there were three of us together, and we decided we wanted to celebrate this.
“The enthusiasm from the females at all three clubs and the management that we were going to do this event was unbelievable and I believe the enthusiasm is still happening today. Whenever I’m walking around the club, they’re saying, ‘Are we going to do that again?’ I’m hoping that we rotate clubs and have it minimally as an annual event.”
Powers said the event was a grand success and many at her club also want to do it again.
“We invited lady members from each of the clubs,” she adds. “We had 176 ladies there for a really nice cocktail party. It was very special. I think everyone really enjoyed themselves. It wasn’t all about lady power but that was some of it.”
She says the flag team participates in intraclub sailing events and go to all the yacht clubs in the area. Early last year in the season, the trio realized that 2025 would be their commodore year.
“We realized last year that the three women were vice and we would step up and be the first time ever in the area to have all three,” Powers said. “There’s a lot of yacht clubs. … Basically, Avalon and Stone Harbor are on Seven Mile Island and Sea Isle is so close so we thought that was really cool. So, from last year, we started planning, we wanted to do something to celebrate that and let everyone know that’s a pretty cool thing. I’m going to be sad when my term is over. Our fiscal year ends Oct. 31.”
Lynch says the ladies’ night was one she won’t forget.
“A lot of women came and supported us,” she shares. “I think it’s hopefully changing for the future. Another thing is, the average age tends to skew high. I think the average age for our yacht club is 65 or 70. Part of that is because it’s so expensive to live down there. Most of the members have been members for years, they bought their houses or they were passed down in their families when houses weren’t $10 million in Avalon.
“I just think it’s cool. I’m the fourth woman [commodore] in my club. Actually, my vice commodore is a woman as well, which is nice. I think it’s important. Years ago, a yacht club was considered an old boys’ club. We still don’t have a lot of women on our board and hopefully slowly that is changing. I think the fact that all three of us are doing that now shows there’s been a bit of a switch. That we’re not just to do the fashion shows or this or that, all the traditional things. I think it’s evolving.”
Wendi Powers
Powers grew up in Central Pennsylvania, then Syracuse, and then settled in West Chester, Pa., where she and husband Tom raised their family.
She and her husband have had their house in Stone Harbor for 29 years and are in their third year as permanent residents.
“When our youngest graduated from high school, we knew that we would sell our house up there and move permanently here,” Powers says. “That’s what we did. He [Nick] has one year left in college and then they’ll all be done.
She added that Carley, 28, lives in New York, Tommy, 24, lives in Ardmore, Pa., and Nick, 21, will be a senior at the University of Tennessee.
Powers enjoys her role at the club. She explained that a flag team at a yacht club consists of a commodore, a vice commodore, and a rear commodore. When they ask you, you become a rear commodore and you support the vice and the commodore. The next year you move up to the vice and the third year you become the actual commodore, she stated.
Commodores basically manage the membership relationship and the membership experience for the clubs, she added.
“Just being a commodore and having the honor of being asked to be on the flag team, it’s an incredible honor to me,” said Powers, who retired in March after 38 years in the corporate world where she was a medical sales rep. “Each of our clubs have the general manager who handles the overall business of the club and they have different people that do different things, but we really are the liaison between the membership and what the club is doing. For me, this is absolutely a huge honor. It’s just been amazing. I just love it.
“When I step into the fact that at the Yacht Club of Stone Harbor, I am the fifth female commodore and this is our 96th year in having the club. To me, that was an incredible honor as well because I feel like it’s a very small number and hopefully we’ll improve that number as we move along in the years to come.”
The Yacht Club of Stone Harbor also currently has a female general manager, Jackie Barnes. It’s not lost on Barnes that Powers is the fifth female commodore and that Barnes is also the first female GM at the club as well.
“This year feels especially meaningful at the Yacht Club of Stone Harbor,” Barnes said. “Wendi Powers, our fifth female Commodore, is a radiant leader and an absolute pleasure to work with. Her theme, ‘Where the Wind Takes Us … Fun Follows,’ perfectly captures the energy and spirit she brings to our club.
“I was appointed general manager in January, the first woman to hold that position here, and it’s been an honor to share this year of leadership with Wendi. Having all three local clubs led by women for the first time is a powerful moment, and I’m proud to be part of it.”
Michele Lynch
Lynch, 53, grew up in Voorhees and attended Notre Dame University for undergrad and the University of Pennsylvania for law school.
She grew up vacationing in Sea Isle City and it’s where she still spends her summers. Her parents have a place on the water in Townsends Inlet, which is actually closer to Avalon. She and her family stay at her parents’ home in the summers.
“I grew up down there,” says Lynch, who lives in Chatham in North Jersey. “We didn’t sail. We would waitress, bus, do jobs that were available. Then when we got older, my sister wanted to get married and they found the Avalon Yacht Club and she got married there. That’s when my parents ended up joining. My oldest daughter was about 7. My mom said, ‘Hey, they have sailing camp.’ She [her daughter] fell in love with it.”
Lynch began organizing youth activities, weekend races and learned all about sailing.
“Now my younger daughter who is 16 also sails,” she shares. “Both my kids sailed in high school. Now my older daughter is at George Washington and on the sailing team there.”
Her youngest daughter is a sailing instructor and hostess at the club.
Lynch and her husband are both attorneys. She became more and more involved with the Avalon Yacht Club since she wasn’t working at the time and her husband’s job was demanding. She went back to work as a divorce attorney for six years, but stopped in February since she had so much going on.
“I’ve been on the board about eight years, I guess,” she shares. “When you’re on the board, they kind of want you to be commodore, ultimately. I kept resisting. I was like, ‘I’ll do this and then I’m done.’ It’s a three-year stint. You’re rear commodore, vice, then commodore. As a parent, I got sucked into doing that.”
The club has fashion shows that raise money for local charities and also does other charitable things.
“I did it for my kids,” Lynch said. “They were involved, had such great friends there.
“Another reason I did it, our sailing program is very important and is kind of the driving force with engaging younger members.”
Pati Gaull
Gaull grew up in Southern New York state in a small town called Endwell, just outside of Binghamton. She came to the Philadelphia area with her first husband and settled in Delaware County. She met her current husband, Frank, there. He had been born and raised in the Philadelphia area.
“When I met Frank, his mom and dad would vacation in Wildwood at his grandfather’s,” Gaull says. “When we got together, we started visiting people who would go to the beach in Strathmere. Then we would go to Sea Isle. We had a boat and we slipped our boat at Larsen’s Marina, which is right across from the Sea Isle Yacht Club.”
They would watch people enjoying each other, the camaraderie. They both agreed that if they had the opportunity, they wanted to become a part of that.
“In 2012, we were fortunate enough to be able to build a home in Sea Isle and in 2015 became members of the Yacht Club of Sea Isle City and pretty much the rest is history,” she adds.
“The reason that we wanted to become part of the yacht club was for community. I thought, ‘What a good way to meet people.’”
Gaull retired as a director of government relations and compliance for a state and federally funded insurance company.
She and her husband have four children, seven grandchildren, and one great-grandbaby.
“Someone asked me if I’d consider running for the board,” she says. “It took a while for me to make the decision to do that, but I was elected to a board seat in 2020 and in 2023 I served a three-year board term and in 2023 became rear commodore, then vice commodore and then commodore.”
“I just felt I wanted to give everything that I could to the club and to the people and to become involved. With every committee that I was on, I was learning so much and I thought,’ why not, I can do this.’”
“It’s fascinating [three women commodores}. The three clubs – Sea Isle, Avalon, and Stone Harbor – have always had a relationship. We have a relationship that spawned into annually, the three clubs do what we call the Club Crawl. We take jitneys from club to club. That’s how we get to meet the members of the other clubs. We’ve been doing this now, at least six years.
“Maybe it [three female commodores at the same time] will encourage and have more female members looking into becoming more involved, running for the board and reaching the level of commodore,” Gaull adds.
Says Jim Collins, GM at the Yacht Club of Sea Isle City: “Pati Gaull has been amazing to work with, she is very supportive of management and the entire staff. Pati is the eighth female Commodore in YCSIC history, which dates back to 1940 when the club was founded. I am fortunate enough to have worked with six of those eight female commodores in my time here as GM. Pati as commodore is dedicated and hardworking, she has really set the bar high with her leadership ... regardless of gender.”