Fort Myers Offshore Enters 2024/2025 Season Undaunted

By Fort Myers Offshore standards, yesterday’s 18-boat turnout for the club’s 2024/2025 season-opening lunch-run from the Sanibel Island Bridge to the Junkanoo Below Deck restaurant in Fort Myers Beach was light. Last year’s season-opener hosted at Fisherman’s Village on Boca Grande attracted almost twice as many boats. The nonprofit scholarship-fundraising club went on to set one participation record after another throughout the season.

Two of Fort Myers Offshore’s most gracious members, Don and Amanda Gardner ran their 36-foot Skater catamaran in yesterday’s season opener. Photos by Matt Trulio/Speedonthewater.com.

But 2024 is anything but last year, at least in Southwest Florida, where in the space of two weeks Hurricanes Helene and Milton walloped the Gulf Coast. So for the Fort Myers Offshore faithful and their guests who made it to yesterday’s outing, the run was much more than a nice Saturday diversion. It was a celebration of survival and gratitude, for every member in the group had at least one friend or neighbor whose property, from structures to possessions, was damaged or even perished.

Club founder Bob Barnhart’s 42-foot Mystic center console was a welcome sight at the docks.

It was their way of raising a fist, or maybe even a middle finger, to the weather gods and saying, “We’re still here.”

Hurricane Milton, the second of the two storms, left Fort Myers Offshore president Tim Hill and his wife and fellow board member, Cyndee, with just one week to secure a new lunch spot ahead of yesterday’s event. Their original destination on Boca Grande was still inaccessible after Milton tore through the area. So they scrambled. Hard.

A fine pair of leaders, Fort Myers Offshore president Eric Belise (left) and club founder Bob Barnhart enjoyed a moment together.

When the Hills first reached out to see if the Junkanoo restaurant in Fort Myers Beach could host yesterday’s group, the place still didn’t have have power. A couple of days later when the lights came on, the establishment told the Hills they could do it, ordered food for the group and Fort Myers Offshore season-opener was back in the lunch-run business.

“This is the first year since Hurricane Ian in late 2022 that the club is able to have a full schedule,” said Cyndee Hill. “I said to myself, I am going to make this happen. We are going to get back to normal.”

Hill and her husband knew that the club members, like most folks in Southwest Florida, just craved normalcy. And that was exactly what they got, which made for a celebratory and maybe even a little defiant vibe.

With their ROS outboard engine-powered 28-foot Skater, Erick and Julie Breckenfelder had the smallest—but far from the slowest—boat in the fleet.

As for the fleet, it was business as usual for the group, meaning a broad mix of boats from a variety of builders. It included Paul Jordan’s bright-white Nor-Tech 340 Sport center console as well as center consoles of the Fountain, Mystic and Sunsation kind, Erik and Julie Brekenfelder’s wild 28-foot Skater catamaran powered by twin Mercury Racing ROS outboard engines designed for the X-Cat offshore racing series, Don and Amanda Gardener’s home-renovated 36-foot Skater cat with outboard power, Mikey Boyle’s MTI 390X cat and more.

The founder of Fort Myers Offshore, Canadian Bob Barnhart had schedule conflicts that forced him to miss most of the club’s 2023/2024 events. But Barnhart, who runs a Mystic Powerboats M4200 center dressed in his signature colors and has a winter-home on Marco Island, wasn’t about to miss this one.

There was abundanct space for the Gardener’s 36-footer and more at the docks.

“I have been getting re-acquainted with so many people today and it’s really heart-warming,” he said. “I wasn’t able to get out as much last year as I wanted, but I am looking to doing as many runs as I can with the club this year.”

Barnhart praised the Hills for the growth of the club, as well as continuing his original vision for it as a scholarship-fundraising entity.

“They stayed true to the fundamentals of what we started,” he said. “The club is just bigger now. They’re doing a great job.”