Longtime powerboat cruiser Glenn “Tut” Tuttle, new vice president of the nonprofit Seven Seas Cruising Association (SSCA), is on a mission to recruit more powerboat cruisers for the 63-year-old club.

“Powerboaters are cruisers too,” he said with a smile at SSCA’s booth at the Miami International Boat Show in February, “and most don’t just have any idea how much SSCA offers to cruisers.”

Seven Seas has exhibited at the Miami show’s Strictly Sail venue for years, but Tuttle got the club’s board to approve a booth in the convention center to attract more powerboat cruisers, and he was there manning the booth all five days of the show. “I don’t know how many new powerboat cruisers we signed up,” he told PassageMaker, “but I’m sure they’ll they enjoy Seven Seas as much as my wife and I do.”

SSCA was founded by a six liveaboard cruising couples in 1952, and has focused exclusively on sailors for many years. In 2009 the group’s voting members approved a proposal to welcome powerboat cruisers not only as associate members but also as commodores, the club’s voting members.

Seven Seas now has more than 80 cruising stations around the world catering to its wide-ranging membership of more than 8,000 cruisers, about 500 of whom are powerboaters. In addition to camaraderie, the club offers a wide variety of services for cruisers, including its popular monthly Commodores Bulletin, a busy website for exchanging information, worldwide port guides, webinars, periodic marine equipment surveys, discounts and special offers on marine products. It also keeps members apprised of political issues affecting liveaboard cruisers.

SSCA also works with the National Marine Manufacturers Association and BOAT/U.S. in the fight to preserve anchoring rights for cruisers. One of the club’s most important traditions is “leaving a clean wake…so that those who follow in our wake will be welcome.”

Tuttle and his wife lived aboard their 44-foot Nauticat motorsailer and then their 46-foot Grand Banks trawler as their only homes for 29 years until they bought a house on Florida’s west coast, and they still spend half of each year living aboard and cruising.

After retiring in 2000, they spent what he calls “ten sweet years” cruising the Caribbean, living aboard with long sojourns in Venezuela, Columbia and Panama. Son of a cruiser, Tuttle began his cruising on Biscayne Bay as a 10-year-old in a mahogany Optimist pram. Visit www.ssca.orgfor more