A treasured spot to channel your Jack Sparrow and Ariel is the Boynton Beach Haunted Pirate Fest and Mermaid Splash, dropping anchor in downtown Boynton Beach this weekend.
The swashbuckling get-down, returning for its fifth year Oct. 21-23, will spend three days raising a mug to loot plunderers and underwater dwellers with live music, food and games, and is anticipating more than 100,000 festivalgoers, say its organizers, the Boynton Beach Community Redevelopment Agency.
“I think we really hit the zeitgeist for people who are into pirates and mermaids, ” says Christopher Burdick, the festival’s organizer and a Boynton Beach CRA coordinator, of the event’s exponential rise in popularity. “We had 5,000 people our first year. It’s good timing, good weather and a good time to be a ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ fan.”
Much of the celebrating will go down at Ocean Avenue Amphitheatre, two blocks south of Boynton Beach Boulevard, and feature pirate re-enactments, magic shows, mermaid tanks and comedians. But landlubbers angling for less Disney-inspired fiction and more historical flavor will find it at Hobb’s Cove on East Ocean Avenue, a stretch of the festival designed like a Renaissance-era port.
Why pirates in Boynton Beach? Burdick says the festival is inspired by an actual shipwreck off Boynton. City records show a 222-foot Norwegian cargo ship named the Lufthus sunk in 1898 about 175 yards away from Manalapan, near Boynton Inlet. Fake gunports were painted along the hull to deter Indonesian pirates, but it was a storm that wrecked the Lufthus as it transported lumber from Pensacola to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“By the time it sank, it was well past the golden age of pirates,” Burdick says. “But we’re trying to create a story behind the event. So we like to say the ghosts of those ‘pirates,’ so to speak, invade the downtown area for three days.”
Other activities, spread out over four blocks between Federal Highway and Seacrest Boulevard, include a mermaid pageant and a March of the Mermaids and Mariners, a 5 p.m. Oct. 22 costumed parade that will kick off at Boynton Beach City Library, roll east to Fourth Avenue and double back. There are also strolling magicians and fairings and food vendors at Grub and Grog Row, a strip of vendors on the western edge of the amphitheater. A highlight of the festival is the treasure hunt, in which festivalgoers travel to different local concession tents in search of clues and prizes.
“There’s so much going on from end to end, it’s like a multi-land theme park, a Renaissance festival and a Halloween cosplay party all in one,” Burdick says.
The Boynton Beach Haunted Pirate Fest and Mermaid Splash runs 6-10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 21, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Oct. 22 and 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Oct. 23 at Ocean Avenue Amphitheatre, 129 E. Ocean Ave. Admission is free. Call 561-600-9093 or go to BBPirateFest.com.
or 954-356-4364
