Scott and Lee were the founding members who started Potomac Rainbow Cruisers by placing an advertisement in the Washington Blade newspaper in August 2002. They went on to host the first raft-ups with their boat "Buoy Toy"at "Three Sisters" on the Potomac River and started the website. The club was initially called the Potomac Rainbow Power Boat Club. Things quickly blossomed as they discovered that there were other gay boaters on the Potomac who were looking for just this sort of club. Through the rest of the 2002 season a small group of dedicated charter members was formed.
With the start of January 2003, the club held its first membership meeting and brunch at “Freddie’s Beach Bar” a gay restaurant in Arlington, Va. The idea of a general membership meeting each winter later became a PRC holiday tradition. At these meeting a variety of important decisions are made, followed by good food and conversation. At the first year’s meeting a suggestion by Stephen Nutt was voted on and passed, changing the club name to "Potomac Rainbow Cruiser.” The other major item on the agenda was to design a club pennant to identify members of our new club. During the remaining winter months, Lee Marcum, Scott Schramm, Derrick Stanley, and Rick Morris worked on designing a pennant, voting on the design, collecting money, and ordering the flags. We ordered our pennants on line at www.burgeeshoppe.com . The membership was very pleased with the new pennant and we were flying our new colors for the start of the boat season on Memorial Day 2003.
The first meeting also established our major cruising events for the year. The boating calendar starts with the Early Bird Cruise, also called the Chicken Cruise, to Ft. Washington. This is a short trip down the river to the marina and dinner at Proud Mary’s restaurant. Unfortunately, the weather does not cooperate at times, so scheduling is everything. The other events for the year are a Memorial Day Raft up, a Gay Pride celebration at the Georgetown “Wall”, a 4th of July raft up to see the fireworks, our Anniversary party at the Georgetown “Wall”, and a Labor Day cruise to Colonial Beach.We also, try to plan a week long cruise to the Chesapeake Bay. For each planned cruise, we will have an event coordinator who is responsible for making preliminary reservations with the marina, dinner reservations, picking exact anchorage, etc.
We have raft-up all almost every weekend of the boating season (April to October) and our favorite locations are the Georgetown Wall, three sisters (above Georgetown), Belmont Bay ( off the Occoquan River), and Mattawoman Creek. Off-season we try to plan get togethers for brunch, dinner, or just going out for drinks. At any one of our raft-up's you will find great food, conversation, drink, swimming, sunning, skiing, new friends and great relaxation.
The club was created to share boating with others and we try to find new members by placing ads in the Washington Blade and have co-hosted the Open Seas Yacht Club Spring Mixer, in hopes of finding new member.
