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

turreted mansion was about to give way to the sinews and sweat and enthusiasm of young men who thought the Four Hundred was a racing distance” (Ransom and Tracy, 1961:3). When these young men came back from the First World War in 1918 and 1919, they eagerly took to the seas in anything that would float. Clearwater Yacht Club was reactivated in 1919 with

Postcard of Taver Bayly (second from right) and Theo Kamensky (far right) celebrating the end of WWI. Courtesy of Heritage Village Archives and Library.

Frank J. Booth as commodore, Owen S. Allbritton II as vice commodore, and Hunter Baker as secretary/treasurer (Ransom and Tracy, 1961). By this time, Cleveland Street had been paved with brick and led down to the large public pier. At the end of the pier sat a two-story building with an ice cream parlor on the first floor and a dance hall on the second (Cadwell, 1977; Dunn, 1974; Gleason, 1976; Sanders, 1983). This pavilion became the headquarters for the resurrected Clearwater Yacht Club and its social and competitive sailing activities (Ransom and Tracy, 1961). While few records remain from this period of the club’s history, and the club again appears to have faded into obscurity within a few years, Ransom and Tracy (1961: 4) propose that: “…in retrospect, that burst of activity may have been what kept the Club from dying altogether. It was in this 1919 – 1921 interval that the fact was implanted that boating was not a rich man’s sport, that a crowd of average boys and girls and men and women could,

Postcard of the two-story pavilion at the end of the Clearwater City Pier. This building was the headquarters of the Clearwater Yacht Club after the end of WWI. Courtesy of Heritage Village Archives and Library.

by their enthusiasm and not much else, have fun and make friendships that otherwise might be lost to them.” Thus, the Clearwater Yacht Club’s current culture of friendly inclusiveness and enthusiasm for boating activities of all kinds (Green, 2008) may have been born in the years following the return of the veterans of World War I.

Chapter 1: In the Beginning 21