Ever wonder what's under Castro's Uniform?

This year's Pinedaville answered that nagging question.

South of the Border meets Pinedaville

South of the Border was ECSA's annual Pinedaville theme this year. "Pinedaville" got its name because it is held in the N/E lee of the Pineda causeway. For us, the trip to Pinedaville was a 2.5 hour trip from our marina. The wind was very light and flukey so we opted to give the engine a workout. We arrived Friday morning and there were already 5 boats anchored. We picked a spot front and center, and as it turned out, right next to Nigel Calder's brother Chris Calder and his wife on their beautiful 40' Malo - brand new and fresh off the boat show tour in Annapolis. The official start of Pinedaville is Saturday at noon, but the early arrivals work together to erect the temporary city on the beach, compete with kitchen, outhouse, three fire pits and, of course, a band stand with DJ and Karaoke. By 3:00 pm, there were about 20 boats in the ancorage. Boats kept arriving all Friday afternoon and into Saturday morning. In all we had 53 boats crammed into the ancorage, and plenty more folks who arrived by car. When the conch shell blew at noon, all the dingys headed for shore driven by strangely clad sailors. (Some of the photographic evidence is below). The days events started with the costume parade, a conga line that snakes along the beach in front of last year's king and queen. After the new king and queen are announced and the costumes are judged, the rum punch ("Bahama Donna's" named after our commodore) is mixed and the party gets going. All day long we play crazy games on the beach, drink rum, dance, drink rum, eat, blow conch shells, drink rum, race dingys, drink rum, throw fish, drink rum...well you get the idea. By sundown the fires get going and the smores come out. Sailors started drifting back to their boats via dingy as the evening wore on. The die hards danced on the beach to Creedance tunes until the DJ made at least ten proclamations that "this is the very last song" and then finally had to beg the die hards to let him go to his boat. Finally, the beach was empty and all that was visable from the ancorage was the flicker of embers in the fire pits.

St. Pete Boat Show

The St. Pete boat show did not disappoint. After breakfast at Buddy Freddy's with the ECSA gang, we headed to St. Pete. We spent the day Saturday at the show, looking at boats and boat stuff. It was fun seeing so many of our sailing buddies there. I think that there was a 95% attendance by Harbor Town's D Dock. We met Pam, Ron and kids at the show right as they opened and hung out with them. Park joined Christen and Lauren - they were the 3 musketeers. Saturday night was the L&A party. It was a little windy and chilly, but as always, we had a blast. I met a few folks from the L&A bb, ate free pizza, drank free beer, and listened to free live music courtesy of Eric Stone. We stayed overnight at the Hilton. Not a bad way to spend a weekend.