The oldest in Ukraine, the Nikolaev yacht club was founded in 1887 in the Spassky tract on the Southern Bug River. In 1904, a member of the yacht club, architect Leopold Rode, built a building in the Italian Renaissance style for the club - a landmark of the city. By the beginning of 1914, the yacht club united more than 300 athletes, and its flotilla consisted of 109 ships, but during the civil war, most of the yachts were driven abroad or burned. Such a fate awaited the revived yacht club during the years of fascist occupation. After the war, a new era began in the activities of the Nikolaev yacht club, and already in 1949 the championship of the USSR in sailing was held in the city. In 2009, a monument to G. Potemkin was erected on the embankment near the yacht club.
The yacht club organizes regattas, one of which is the Sergey Shapovalov Ecological Regatta, which gathers the largest number of yachts on the Black Sea. The wardroom hosts the annual spring yacht fair.