2016’s Rocking Start
Just five days into the New Year things are looking really good. Photo courtesy/copyright Jay Nichols/Naples Image.
OK, I confess: I don’t love working every weekend. But when you say you’re going to produce content seven days a week, 365 days a year—as we do on speedonthewater.com—it comes with the territory. That online traffic diminishes on weekends doesn’t give you license to slack off, as tempting as that may be. If you say you’re going to do it, you do it. No excuses.
But I have to confess something else: Thanks to the fifth annual Joey Gratton Memorial New Year’s Day Fun Run and the Fort Myers Offshore New Year’s Fun Run, just one day and 76 miles apart from one another on Florida’s west coast, I dug working last weekend to provide coverage of both events. Between the two happenings, they attracted more than 130 boats. What’s more, they served their own higher purposes. One celebrated the life and times of a beloved offshore racer. The other raised more than $10,000 for a college scholarship fund.
That they weren’t scheduled on the same day meant folks in the area could participate in both runs—yet another positive start to 2016. Scheduling events during the peak of the go-fast boating season almost guarantees that there’s more than one great event per weekend. There’s just no way around it. But that doesn’t have to happen on the first weekend of the New Year, even when the events are in one another’s backyard, and it didn’t.
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and then