You may be boating today—at least if you happen to be in Southwest Florida—but the odds don’t favor it. Not that anyone that anyone needs to tell you, but it is Christmas Day for, pardon the pun, for heaven’s sake. So much as you might feel the urge for a quick lunch-run, you probably should resist it. Most waterfront lunch-spots around here are closed today, anyway.
But from tomorrow through January 1, it’s game-on for boating in these parts. Throughout the week leading up to the Joey Gratton Memorial New Year’s Day Fun Run, local performance-boating fans as well as out-of-towners from the Midwest, Northeast and Canada will be out in force and enjoying the best weather and water conditions in the country.
The only “formally” organized event on the water between now and the Gratton affair is the Fort Myers Offshore Holiday Run set for Saturday, December 27. Everything else is catch-as-catch can, meaning loosely organized—and I mean loosely—outings put together by individuals in the area.
Knowing about them is the trick, and there is no established method for that. A run from Sarasota to Tampa usually falls into place, as does a run around Anna Maria Island. Both of those events typically end with a lunch stop. There might be just three of four boats in the mix. There could be a dozen. You won’t know until happens.
So how do you find about who’s going where and when? Your best bet for information is someone local, and if you’re heading to Southwest Florida with your boat in tow you probably know a performance-boating fan and who answers to that description.
Someone, for example, such as Ryan Beckley of Kinetic Animation. The primary organizer of the Gratton event, Beckley typically has the skinny.
“We usually do The Tampa Bay run on the December 30 and the ‘Gulf Run’ around Anna Maria Island on December 31,” he said. “And then there is the Gratton Run on New Year’s Day.”
For those who want to skip the New Year’s Eve mayhem and pressure to have the best time anyone ever had anywhere, Beckley hosts a casual celebration at his shop that night.
So at the very least, you have three solid events—the Fort Myers Offshore Holiday run, the Beckley’s New Year’s Even soiree and Gratton happening—you can count on. And chances are you’ll be here with friends. Even if you just stick with them and head as fleet of one, there are far worse places to be on the water, like pretty much anywhere else in the continuous United States, this time of year.
And on that note: Merry Christmas. May today find you among the people you love.
May you find yourself on the water for rest of the week and beyond.