AVAST!  Ye LUBBERS!!
Ahoy from the Pirate ship Calypso 

Read on and you shall know a tale of a modern Treasure Coast skipper who lives the glamorous dream of square rigged ships; of they who raced to the starboard tack with the night's storm winds howling in the lanyards and his aquatic stallion pounding through the wave troughs with a bone in her teeth.

"Somewhere out there, just o're the horizon, no doubt, sails the quarry befittin' me comfortable retirement with her holds stuffed with plundered riches just a-watin for me and the lads to put a 15 pounder across her bow and bring her to a merciless end."

"Well, one can dream can't I?" Cap'n Daniel mused.

That's Pirate captain Daniel Red (above) pondering the 19th century drama on the seas from the comfort of his home in the main cabin of his square rigged sailing ship (above) rather firmly attached to his moorings in Sebastian, FL.

Yup that marvelous replica is his home.  He gets free dock rent and electric and lives on his ship which began Pirate life as a well worn Chris Craft yacht.

Daniel, once a minister who grew weary of tainted church dogma, stripped the old yacht to its bare bones then hand built the superstructure and sail rigging.  Hand built I said!

These days Daniel and friends do a Pirate show every Monday and he rents his ship/home for private parties.  One of them recently involved a wedding aboard where crewmen dueled the groom until he forced his way aboard and into the waiting arms of his about-to-be betrothed.

"We used to do some charters", he said, but the economic reality of spiraling insurance costs and regulatory compliance pretty much put an end to that side of his business.

"Besides it takes about a mile to turn this thing around and on our last voyage we hung up on several sandbars in the shallow and often narrow channel of the intercoastal waterway," he lamented.

Dan also draws maps of the many islands in that nearby waterway then buries "treasure" somewhere on the island selected by his customer who has bought his very "original" map, and with the purchase helps fund Dan's enterprise, and either uses his own vessel or a local charter to reach his island and begin his very own make-believe treasure search.

That's Dan regaling Sue with map stories under the overhang of the foc'sul deck above.  Note the darker green cylinders in the port and starboard foreground.  Those are canons suitable for discouraging unwelcome visitors.

Meanwhile, all the mysterious going's on above and below decks are presided over by the visage of Tinkerbelle hanging from the port yardarm; haunting the vessel day and night with her neck stretched by this glowing gallows rope and slipping noose.

The Calypso is "...anchored down at the carbunculously old Sembler Marina"...behind Squid Lips--a notorious waterin' hole in Sebastian "...so come yee down an' visit anytime."

Should you accept the invitation from the ship's web site, Fogeyisms can assume no responsibility for your safe return.

Just kidding, of course!