The First Hundred Years: Clearwater Yacht Club, 1911-2011

Don Cochran, Sr. Courtesy of the Seavy family.

Don Cochran, Sr. , was born in Hodges, South Carolina, in 1892 and moved to Clearwater in 1904. Cochran was owner of Don Cochran Plumbing Company. Like Kamensky and Roberts, he spent his spare time on the water. Cochran was an outstanding Snipe sailor. He won several of CYC’s early International Snipe Midwinters Regattas and three consecutive Southeastern Snipe Regattas in Charleston, South Carolina (from 1938 to 1940). He was the state champion in the Snipe class in the 1940s. In the Cochran family,

Francis Seavy. Courtesy of the Seavy family.

Chapter 13: A Century of Champions 123 Francis Seavy was born in 1921 in Jacksonville, Florida, and grew up in Clearwater. He worked for Seavy Lumber Company and later for Morgan Yacht in St. Petersburg and Ross Yacht in Clearwater. Seavy began sailing as a young boy when he made his first boat out of whatever materials he could find and sailed it in the protected bayou across the street from his family’s home. He first sailed a Snipe while still in high school—with Ann Bayly (the late Ann Cornett) as his crew. By 1947, he was sailing Snipe champions are a tradition. Cochran’s son Jimmy won the National Snipe Championship in the Junior Division in 1935. Don Cochran, Jr. (commodore 1958–1959) was the Southern States Champion in the late 1970s. His son Bruce (with Mike Walbolt as crew) represented a third generation of Cochrans who did CYC proud on the racecourse by winning both the Junior and Senior Snipe State Championships in 1960 as well as the District Four Championship in 1962 and 1966.