Pirate Festival on Fort Myers Beach is always a blast. This marks our third year attending and this year was no different. We had planned to take Blue Turtle to Matanzas Bridge on the North end of the island to anchor for the weekend, but our generator currently isn’t working since we have the starter in the shop to be repaired. Since it’s still 90 degrees out (even in October) it isn’t quite cool enough to sleep without air conditioning. We decided to put the dinghy in the water and taxi to and from the North end where the Pirate Festivities were taking place.
As far as dressing up like pirates, Friday evening is the best night since there is a pub crawl that takes place and most folks tend to dress up for that. There’s also an adult costume party at Salty Sam’s Marina later that evening evening even though we never stay around to check it out. We were hoping to have Corey with us this time but his mother’s birthday falls on the same weekend. So, for Friday evening, it was just Randy and I dressing up. This year, I picked up a couple new parrots and a pirate hat at Party City, so we had some new additions to our growing pirate gear. Once dressed for the pirate party, we climbed into the dinghy and headed to the dinghy dock located under the Matanzas Bridge. We didn’t actually participate in the official pub crawl so we headed to House of Brewz for a pre-dinner drink and ran into some friends. After that we went to one of our favorite spots, La Ola’s where every table was taken. A couple from Indiana were kind enough to offer to share their booth with us. They were very friendly and even offered us a shot that we think had Fireball in it. After dinner, we walked through the Times Square area checking out all the pirates and the band that was playing and then headed back to the dinghy docks to head for home.
On Saturday, we got Corey back and piled into the dinghy again to head to the festivities to check out the canon battle on the water. We took our time heading there and on the way detoured around to check out the shrimp boats. We found a nice spot to drop anchor and waited for the battle to begin. This year there were only 2 boats participating—the Pieces of Eight cruise ship and another sailboat. The battle lasted about 20 minutes and once the cannons stopped blasting, we made our way to the dinghy dock. We walked around and checked out the various booths stopping for a beer at House of Brewz—this is our favorite spot when it’s hot outside because the AC is always kicking. After that, we headed to the beach so Corey could skim board while Randy and had a drink and some nachos at The Salty Crab. We ended up having an early dinner at the Island View Restaurant before heading back to the dinghy docks and then home.
