Sailing & Regattas

So what do the members do when they aren’t on their boats, dreaming of boats or telling sea stories at the bar. Well at the Clearwater Yacht Club a good number of them are either helping out with our junior sailors or they are planning for, or recovering from, organizing some of the best run regattas held in the United States.

Clearwater is blessed with some of the best sailing conditions to be found in the US. From October to May we have generally predictable afternoon breezes, moderately warm water and for sailors living in the Northern States or Europe, Clearwater is the place to compete. The Clearwater Yacht Club has some of the best volunteer race officials and really knows how to run superb regattas.

Can you imagine the thrill of watching a hundred or more identical boats jostling for position on the starting line of a one-design dinghy Championship, and then an hour or so later feverishly recording sail numbers as the boats finish that race. A few short minutes to regroup and it’s time to start the next race. Boring it’s not, sometimes at the end of a long day it’s hard to tell whether the competitors or race committee have had more fun.

The bigger boat racing scene has changed a great deal during the last ten years. The days when many of the races were long overnight events have fallen victim to the lighter constructed yachts that now dominate this racing scene. Although many of us still like to tell, and sometimes retell again, those sea stories about competing in the old Kahlua Cup with its 100+ mile grueling overnight race courses, they were much more fun to compete in, than to organize. Bouncing around on the finish boat all night, waiting for competitors to finish was really pretty boring. Today even the larger yachts prefer to race much shorter courses, very similar to the one-design dinghies.

For the old salts, we still run the Clearwater to Key West Race every spring and are joined by a good number of our power boats that go to enjoy the famous post race parties in Key West.

How does a member get involved in all this fun? Well, at the Clearwater Yacht Club we have two committees that are involved in different aspects of sailboat racing. The Yachting Committee is primarily responsible for training race committee officials and hosting competitive events. The Youth Sailing Committee is responsible for coaching and training sailors from 8 years old, until they leave for college. Both committees work very closely together and both have been very successful. In 2003 the Clearwater Yacht Club’s race committee was twice nominated for a National Award given for Race Management Excellence. The 2003 Female World Youth Sailing Champion is a member of our Youth Sailing Team and two of the five members of the US National Laser Team are graduates of our Youth Sailing Team.

Now if you weren’t lucky enough to have been born with sailboat racing in your blood you could be forgiven for thinking it would be way too complicated to learn, unless you had been a racer yourself. That’s really a fallacy, just one day assisting on a mark boat, adjusting the course for every small wind shift and you will be convinced. Shortly after that you will be proudly wearing a Clearwater Yacht Club - Race Committee Polo shirt, will have made many new friends, met some of the top sailors in the world and be forever hooked.

Full details of the various membership categories we offer can be found in the Membership Section.

Click on the "Why I should join CYC" link on the left for information on our various classes of membership and how to join.