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

the bay and attracting visitors to the yacht club and the town. The boating activities of the yacht club were used in Chamber of Commerce advertisements of the day to draw visitors to the area. A brochure from this era states: “An annual Mid-Winter Regatta and other boating events staged under the auspices of the Clearwater Yacht Club are added attractions to all who are interested in boating.” In 1931, after a heated debate that nearly split the club in two, threatening its very survival and causing Davis to be recalled as commodore, Clearwater Yacht Club decided to move its headquarters to Clearwater Beach where access to the gulf would be more convenient. In 1932, the club elected Ted Kamensky commodore

Inside of a Chamber of Commerce brochure used in the 1920s and 1930s crediting Clearwater Yacht Club with providing sail and power boat activities for the community. Courtesy of the Fleming/ Green family.

and began the move to the location on Mandalay Avenue that would become her headquarters for the next forty years. At the time of the club’s fiftieth anniversary, reflecting on this tumultuous period of club history, PC Jimmy Davis stated: “So, the poor, tired Clearwater Yacht Club made her home port at last. It is to be hoped that once in a while she will think of the stormy seas she has sailed and the reefs she has been on and off, over the years now half a century, and will remember with pride and affection the crews and masters who steered her course to her present port of splendor” (Ransom and Tracy, 1961: 9) . The club’s new home was established on land donated to the City of Clearwater by the Skinner family with the understanding the yacht club would have the benefit of the grant. The city offered this plot of land as a site for the new Clearwater Yacht Club building. With a total of less than twenty dollars in the bank, the club now had a site but no money with which to build a building. This, however, did not stop the indomitable CYC members of 1932. “Today, we might wring our hands or at least trot down to the bank to see about a loan; back then, they did things differently. Somebody found out the Peoples Bank of Dunedin had foreclosed on a ramshackle house in Safety Harbor

Chapter 2: Boom, Bust, and Back Again 29