My weekend(with pics)

[THEFERMANATOR]

Well I upped and decided to go off and go to GASPARILLA 08 SATURDAY and did the pirate invasion. For those who have never heard of it, it is a basically a GIANT party to celebrate Jose Gaspar who terrorized this area many years back. http://gasparillapiratefest.com/history.shtml The part I went to see was the invasion portion where they bringthe pirate ship in through the bay up into the exclusive area of TAMPA BAY and ends at the convention center. The weather was pretty crumby by FLORIDA standards, so this year wasn't a really big turnout(probably only 500 smaller personal boats were there plus the bigger charter boats and parade boats). We got ther about 10:30 in the morning and waited over next to the shoreline, and at 11:30 the invasion began and we started our way in. There were to many true classics there, several V20's and BERTRAM 31's. After the invasion we made our way up to the convention center through the mass's of boats and rode through the mayhem. I didn't take any pictures of the wildlife since I knew that the eye wouldn't them slide, but I got plenty of the invasion and a PG-13 pole dance on a T-top.

Picture of downtown TAMPA from where we lined up.


A few pictures giving you an idea of how many boats were waiting for the invasion.





The pirate ship before the invasion, you can see the mass's piling on it. There's even a really nice FORMULA 233 in the far right of the picture.


A few pics from the invasion across the bay.




A couple of them fancy go-fast's.




The MASSIVE bottleneck of boats entering the channel to the convention center.


A few shots making our way down the channel.



Making our way up to the convention center.


A picture of the pirate ship at the convention center just before the coast guard came over and made me move away.


And another pirate ship that does charters.


All in all a good day, the kids seemed to have had fun.