Florida Powerboat Club Returning To Naples For Spring Fun Run After 10-Year Absence

Though he’s still moving into his company’s new Pompano Beach, Fla., headquarters and facing a sea of video content to produce from last month’s Key West Poker Run, Florida Powerboat Club president Stu Jones is in a good place to get it all done and still enjoy the Christmas holiday. The Key West happening is well behind him and the club’s next event, the Winter Fun Run, is a month-and-a-half out. So Jones has the time—his most precious commodity—to make it happen.

The Naples area offers some of the most spectacular scenery on the Southwest Florida coast. Photos by Pete Boden copyright Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.

But at the moment Jones is particularly pumped about an event happening four months from now. After a 10-plus-year hiatus, the club will return to Naples, Fla., March 20-23, for its Spring Fun Run. Jones has secured the Naples Hyatt House and its adjacent marina for the event.

“I knew sooner or later we’d get back to Naples,” he said. “It’s part of Florida that is really less discovered and it offers a beautiful environment of both the natural and the manmade.

“It has been hard for us to get back there because it is such a popular place,” he continued. “As we all know, recreational boating has grown tremendously in the past several years, and more people own boats in Naples than ever before. Even most of the transient docks are spoken for. The Hyatt House is a relatively new property and it turned out to be a great opportunity for the club and its members.

The venue will be able to accommodate 40 boats and is open to club-member-owned vessels up to 43 feet.

The Naples Hyatt House venue includes an adjacent marina.

Jones has two outings planned for the weekend. On Friday, the fleet will run north to Fort Myers for lunch.

“I call that a ‘collector run,’ as we’ll head to Fort Myers and ‘collect’ the boats coming down from the area to Naples,” he explained.

The Saturday poker-run fleet will head south to Everglades City. The trek will include a long course on the Intracoastal Waterway and a short course offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. The Intracoastal version will take roughly three hours each way, while the open-water option will take approximately 90 minutes. Jones will stagger the starts so that both groups arrive at Everglades City at close to the same time for lunch.

Said Jones, “I knew sooner or later we’d get back to Naples.”

“Going to Naples through the Marco Island area on the Intracoastal is phenomenally scenic,” Jones explained. “But the outside course is a lot shorter.

“We’re giving our members and their guests the option of selecting the format best-suited to them,” he added.