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

Chapter 15 The Current Culture of CYC: A Friendly, Inclusive Club with a World Class Reputation

Robert Putnam’s popular work, Bowling Alone (2000), suggests there has been a notable decrease in participation in the kinds of private membership clubs that, at one time, were the purveyors and gatekeepers of social capital throughout the United States. Both the causes and consequences of this decline have been examined. Few studies, however, have explored why people who do participate in these organizations have chosen to buck the trend. In 2008, students enrolled in my Senior Seminar in Sociology class conducted a study of CYC members designed to address this question. The study included twenty in-depth personal interviews with randomly selected club members and an extensive survey of the entire membership. Three hundred and five members returned the survey. The study addressed a variety of issues related to the current culture of CYC including: 1. demographic characteristics of the club’s members; 2. levels of social and recreational participation of members in the wider community; 3. reasons members chose to join; and 4. satisfaction with various aspects of the membership experience (Green, 2008). 131