Category: Activities & Calendar

Charlotte County closed the Port Charlotte Beach Complex completely for a while in order to demolish some facilities that were slated for replacement and also to use the boat ramp area to recover derelict vessels from the harbor. The drone shot at right shows the area where the swimming pool and other buildings used to stand as of February 2025, shortly after the park reopened. We’re working on reopening The Sailing Center but at this time we do not have a dock that is suitable for safe small boat sailing. Replacing it is apparently not high on the Charlotte County priority list. We are not sure when we can regularly go sailing again but we are restoring order to our facility in anticipation of that day. Although general access to The Sailing Center was cut off by the closure of the park, the county did allow us in to begin recovery efforts. We refloated the Catalina 26 that was sunk and removed the diesel engine. The picture at left shows us removing the mast from that boat. Disposal of the hull is on our list of projects to complete. Once the park was partially reopened to the public, there was still a bit of an access problem for The Sailing Center because recovery vehicles, vessels, and dumpsters were still blocking our area. After we could actually use our gate again, the first task was to get some boats out of the way to make room to work in the...

The wind-driven storm surge from Hurricane Helene brought about a foot of muddy water into the Sailing Center building but overall damage was not too bad. Our boats were not hurt, we just lost some tools, supplies, and documents that were too close to the ground. We picked up the pieces and were carrying on as usual when Hurricane Milton came along. The water came up quite a bit higher in Milton, removing our 420’s from their trailers and smashing them into the Optimist Prams and Minifish, which then floated into the Sunfish rack, freeing all of them and sending them into the Laser rack and then the whole jumble of boats fetched up against our bigger boats and the fence. What a mess. Here’s a video summary: The small sailboat pile was interlocked and we had to cut the rig off a Laser to extract it. These 420’s were strapped to ground anchors on their trailers. Now the trailers and the metal pole barn roof and two of the hulls need repair. Inside the building there seems to have been some wave action, enough to knock over a pretty big air compressor. It was pungent. After we shoveled away the wet piles, the dried mud had to be scraped from the floor. It’s still going to need pressure washing. We got the small boats moved from the messy pile at one end of the yard. To a more organized stack at the other end of the yard. Next...