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

A Brief History of Yacht Clubs in America, Florida, and Tampa Bay What is it about the sea that exerts such a strong pull on human hearts? Is it the chemical composition our bodies share with our watery planet or the fact that life began in the depths of the sea? Is it because our ancestors depended on her bounty for sustenance or because she carried them on some of the grand adventures that populated the earth? Are these deep stirrings within us due to the mythic pirates, sea monsters, and mermaids that swam through our childhoods or the way the sea can humble our souls and help us see ourselves as a small part of something much greater? I vividly remember watching the sunset from the bow of my grandfather’s cruiser While Away when I was a little girl. On one such occasion, as the great orange ball sank into the Gulf of Mexico, I suddenly felt with absolute clarity that, like a drop of water in the ocean, I was one with the universe and everything in it. The sea Chapter 1 In the Beginning 13