Clearwater Community Sailing Center

The Clearwater Community Sailing Center is the public sailing hub for Clearwater and the Pinellas beaches, run by the Clearwater Community Sailing Association, a 501(c)(3), with the stated mission of safe, enriching and affordable sailing for residents and visitors, “including youth, seniors and the disabled”. It sits at 1001 Gulf Boulevard on Sand Key, across the road from Sand Key Park and just south of the Clearwater Pass bridge, and launches off its own beach into Clearwater Harbor, the Intracoastal side of the barrier island. It is open Tuesday to Sunday, nine to five, with the first boats out at ten.

The fleet is the draw: more than fifty boats, among them Optimist prams, Sunfish, Lasers, 420s, Hobie Wave and Hobie Getaway catamarans, windsurfers, kayaks and paddleboards. Anyone can rent by the hour once one person in the boat has passed the center’s twenty-question written sailing test and everyone has signed the waiver; members use the whole fleet during open hours at no rental charge, on annual or seasonal memberships, and can keep a sail or paddle boat up to 23 feet in the center’s dry storage. Private lessons run by the hour for all ages on sailboats and windsurfers, with two hours the recommended start for a beginner, and the center’s guided adventure sails take a family or a group of up to four out on a Hobie cat with an instructor. The sailing-area page is worth reading before you cast off: the Big Shoal lies straight out from the beach and must be left to the south, the Small Shoal bounds the water to the north, and the center points sailors south toward One Tree Island.

Youth sailing is the center’s largest program. A ten-week summer camp takes ages five to sixteen, a homeschool sailing group meets on Fridays in spring and fall for grades one to eight, and the race teams run year-round: an Opti green fleet for eight- to thirteen-year-olds new to racing, an Opti red, white and blue team for sailors under fifteen, a Club 420 development team and race team for sailors over fourteen, and windsurfing development and foil teams, the foil team among the most competitive in the country by the center’s account, with alumni who have represented the United States at the Youth Worlds, the Pan American Games and the Paris 2024 Olympics. Youth team sailors must be members. Scholarships for camp and the teams are funded by the center’s annual Winds of Change fundraiser and individual donors, and the center is on the Florida Sailing Association’s list of accredited sailing centers.

The center hosts regattas for youth and adult fleets on the harbor, the 2026 U.S. Windsurfer National Championships among them, and runs a four-week sunset race series on its own boats on Wednesday evenings each fall. It is also where Sailability Greater Tampa Bay holds its community sails for sailors of all abilities, covered with the state’s other programs in adaptive sailing in Florida; the youth side is in youth sailing in Florida.