before offering help, but eventually
they became the best of
friends.
Larry truly loved boats, so it
was a devastating experience
when his boat Sandspur, a
36-foot launch, was destroyed.
The Sandspur ran from
Cabbage Key to Boca Grande
several times a week to pick up
guests, buy food, and check the
mail. Then came the day when
Larry was going to pick up new
guests, but it was windy and
rough in the Boca Grande Pass.
He got past Punta Blanca and
debated whether to turn back
or not…but decided to keep
on going. He had a 14-year old
with him who was vacationing
on the island with his family.
When Larry got into the pass
the boat started to feel heavy,
coping in rough seas. The
seams began to open, with the
result that the boat began
taking on water. Larry tried to
get to the phosphate docks,
but didn’t make it. He was 100
feet offshore when he threw
the anchor off the stern, hoping
the boat would sink off the
beach where it could be
recovered. That didn’t work,
and the boat was broken up
on the shore. Larry and the
boy survived, but that was the
end of the Sandspur and for
about a year they had to use
guide boats to ferry guests.
Peter purchased a 34 foot boat
hull in the meantime, and the
Knight Brothers took this
fiberglass shell and turned it
into a replacement for the
Sandspur, named the Karevan.
Debbie remembers the run
boat that would come from
Punta Gorda with larger
orders of supplies and huge
300-pound cakes of ice for the
fish house. Her dad loved to
paint at the fish house, she said, when he was waiting for the run to arrive.
“Chief would chip away at that cake of ice by hand to form masses of ice to
cool the fish,” she said. “The run boat would also bring 55-gallon drums of
gasoline and kerosene. If you wanted to buy gas, though, you had to use a
manual pump.”
When commercial fishing was banned in the 1990s someone burned down
Chief ’s fish house and it was no more.
Guests could arrive on Cabbage Key by boat (after taking the train or a car
to Boca Grande) or seaplane from Ft. Myers. Taylor remembers two planes,
an amphibian and a Taylor Craft that would fly out every Sunday bringing guests
to the Inn, as well as the Sunday paper, clean bed linens, and other items.
“If you had to send anything down there or have anything delivered you
would ask Buddy Bobst the pilot to take it,” Taylor said. “His Republic Seabee
Amphibian seated four people, the Taylor Craft just two. He made four or five
stops before Fort Myers, and if there was an open seat you could pay $5 and
fly with him.”
Three things that made remote island living even more challenging were
hurricanes, mosquitoes and lack of air conditioning. Hurricane notifications were
made primarily by updates on the radio, but one time a wooden block with a
yellow tail containing a hurricane warning was dropped from a plane flying over
the island (it was found later in the jungle, after the hurricane had passed). The
Stults children remember the fogger filled with DDT which was used around
the grounds, and particularly recall being sprayed by a FLIT gun filled with the
repellant as they raced for the door to get inside without mosquitoes following
them. Mosquitoes were so severe that summer dress was more likely to be
long-sleeved shirts and trousers, rather than shorts and t-shirts.
Life was on the simple side when, in the first years, there was no phone, no
car … and certainly, no television. Debbie, as a teenager, missed the company
of her friends when she was not at school in Sarasota, though she did have a
friend whom she met in Boca Grande who flew over Cabbage Key dropping
letters sealed in orange juice cans asking for occasional dates. Peter and Taylor
were much more island-oriented.
When asked how his work as a famous artist affected their family life, the
January/February 2018 GASPARILLA ISLAND 65