TOYS AND TOURS ON FORT MYERS BEACH

COURTESY PHOTO

First Mate Lucas Kisela sat on the stern of a motorboat, which started buzzing across choppy water a few hundred yards off Fort Myers Beach. He was harnessed to a parachute and a rope.

 

Then Captain Scott Hall, tanned the color of coffee, let out the rope gradually like fishing line. In a few seconds, all of Estero Island and beyond was visible for Kisela and his Florida Weekly guest. Hall motored away from shore, making a tiny, silent wake below.

"Look how small the boat looks down there," Kisela said. His feet dangled 700 feet above the water, as if on a swing set. "That's a 30-foot boat."

Kisela and Hall take guests on this carnival-like ride called parasailing about 60 times per day in peak months (March and April) for Holiday Water Sports of Fort Myers Beach, Inc. And owners Sharon and Kevin Faircloth said the company also offers guided group tours and rental gear at three separate locations on the Beach.

The Faircloths have been adding new tours and an array of water sports equipment to this family owned business, since they opened 17 years ago. Hundreds of jumbo umbrellas and lounge chairs, a fleet of Waverunners (jet skis), sightseeing motor boats with seating for 10, kayaks, small sailboats and aqua-cycles (like a tricycle with enormous plastic wheels) await beach-goers looking for kicks.

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTOS EVAN WILLIAMS Holiday Water Sports of Fort Myers Beach, Inc. owners Sharon and Kevin Faircloth, left, with Manager Gary Harrison.

Equipment is generally rented by the half hour or hour, with Waverunners being the most costly at $100 for a full hour. It's $60 or $70 to parasail (the more expensive trip includes more height, longer duration, a picture and half off all future parasailing trips).

The most popular tour is the 90 minute Dolphin Adventure Tour, a journey undertaken on Waverunners ($115 per person). Guides

such as Manager Gary Harrison take guests the entire length of Estero Island, and into the back bay by Lovers Key.

 

"Some people like to go slow, some like to go (top speed) the whole time…" he said. "Every tour is different. Sometimes you see dolphins and manatees, or go shelling on the beaches.

First Mate Lucas Kisela is a host to Holiday Water Sports' guests when they parasail.

"Sometimes the dolphins come right up next to you. They'll come up above water and give you a wink."

For the Faircloths - who were high school sweethearts and spent youthful vacations windsurfing, waterskiing and fishing in the Gulf - owning the water sports concession company now seems inevitable. But not always.

 

They went to separate universities after graduation and pursued other interests (including ill fated office jobs). He called in 1991 and asked her to be his business partner on Fort Myers Beach, after buying Holiday Water Sports from his brother. She agreed.

Two years later they were married, but in the interim they ran the business by themselves, renting out three wave runners and 10 umbrellas from the their hut at the northern tip of Estero Island, in front of Pink Shell Beach Resort and Spa.

"The only days off we had was if it rained," Sharon Faircloth said. "We would pray for rainy days."

Over the next ten years they started a family and watched the beach, and their business, grow. Ownership changed at the Pink Shell, and the renovated resort brought in new customers. Also, three large condos next to the resort replaced a smattering of smaller cottages. The Faircloths eventually expanded to two other locations on Fort Myers Beach.

(The Best Western Beach Resort in 1993 and the Diamond Head Beach Resort in 2006.)

Now they're weathering the slowest business month of the year - May - along with a hike in gas and insurance prices, they say, but local families come back starting Memorial Day weekend when the kids are out of school.

Even with three children of their own - Kacie, 5, Ben, 8 and Bailey, 10 - the couple has continued to operate the business 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week, with help from managers like Harrison.

And they've moved their family within view of sky high parasailers - to a home in Fort Myers, just over the bridge to Fort Myers Beach. Sharon Faircloth admitted parasailing is most popular with teens; however, a group of seniors were spotted drifting into the sky, one or two at a time, above Captain Hall's boat last Thursday.

It was a windy day, and later when the wind picked up even more and two teenage girls from Switzerland wanted to ascend, Hall, who has 11 years of parasailing experience, decided against it. They were too light, he thought, to not get jostled around by the wind up there.

He radioed Captain Derek Elverd, who shuttles guests out to the parasailing boat and back, to pick the girls up.

"(The wind) picks up so quickly out here," Elverd said. "If you're not comfortable with it you don't do it. Safety comes first."

Faircloth said guests can expect a serene experience when they parasail. "Most people will be very scared or just excited when they come to the counter and sign up. By the time they come back in they say 'it was so relaxing up there, so quiet, it was peaceful.'"

And, according to First Mate Kisela, even romantic. He said it's not unusual to see a couple go up, and then be engaged by the time they're reeled back in.