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

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Like the rest of the nation, Clearwater and CYC were profoundly affected by World War II. In 1942, there were twenty thousand people in Clearwater (Dunn, 1974; Gleason, 1976). George Seavy was mayor from 1941 to 1946. The Belleview Biltmore Hotel was leased to the Army Air Corps for use as additional barracks for service men stationed at Mac Dill and Drew Field in Tampa. Approximately three thousand service men were housed in the hotel, and the golf course was used as training grounds. CYC member Donald Roebling played a major role in the war by inventing the Alligator amphibian vehicle. He tested it in the waters off of Clearwater (Dunn, 1974). As in the office of mayor, there was little change in the leadership of CYC during the war years. Herman Keller was commodore of CYC from 1940 to 1945. Few regattas were held because so many of the young sailors were away at war. Blackouts and rations reduced boating activities “almost to the vanishing point” (Ransom and Tracy, 1961: 20). Guy Roberts and Don

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