Clearwater Community Sailing Association

The Clearwater Community Sailing Center has received unprecedented damage from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and they need the community's support to help them rebuild.

My name is Mateo Rodriguez. I was first introduced to sailing as a 10-year-old during a summer camp I attended at CCSC in 2010. The friendly community and enjoyment provided by the sailing center immediately made me fall in love with the sport. I grew up at the sailing center, starting in the Optimists, then later moving on to 420s. The sailing center always gave me opportunities to branch out and try new things. After graduating college, I decided to come back to my second home as an employee and try to be for the next generation what my coaches were to me: people who provided a safe learning environment while keeping things extremely fun. My sailing center story is one similar to thousands of other kids and adults who have spent time enjoying what the sailing center has to offer.

As a 501c3 nonprofit, the Clearwater Community Sailing Association seeks to provide sailing opportunities to everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic background. In the past, the organization has been able to scholarship hundreds of kids and give them the opportunity to go sailing when they otherwise would not have been able to.

Unfortunately, the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton threaten our very existence as an organization. Both of the docks we use to dock our safety boats were completely destroyed and reduced to pilings. The docks themselves were pushed up into our yard, destroying our boat racks and crushing multiple boats. There are tens of thousands of pounds of seaweed and sand inside the building, on top of the deck, and in our yard. Many of our club boats floated up, were pushed up, and crammed into a corner, and were relentlessly beaten by waves. Most of our fencing is down and broken. The cherry on top is the 40+ ft Sea Ray boat that became unanchored and crashed into our sea wall and docks.

The sailing center community rallied together after Helene and great progress was made towards cleaning everything up, but unfortunately just as efforts were near completion, Hurricane Milton popped up in the Gulf and hit us again. The sailing center staff launched an operation like preparation of the remaining sailing center assets in anticipation of the next storm, and luckily little additional physical damage was incurred. But, due to the close succession of both storms the sailing center has been forced to remain closed long past expectation and will incur significant losses in revenue due to the organizations continued inability to operate.

Evidently, this will take the sailing center months to recover and hopefully get back to normalcy.

Not all is bad, however. The most valuable assets of the sailing center were taken off-site and protected. We have been affected by storms in the past, but nothing could have prepared us for the sheer destruction both of these storms would cause.

I am asking all those in the Clearwater area and general sailing community for their support. The funds will go directly to the Clearwater Community Sailing Association to help rebuild and subsidize financial losses from the organizations current inability to operate. Anything helps.