A little more than a year after Hurricane Ian damaged Captiva Cruises’ flagship boat, the Lady Chadwick has returned to its fleet.
Captiva Cruises celebrated the return of the 65-foot-long boat that can accommodate 148 passengers Tuesday with a ride from McCarthy’s Marina, 11401 Andy Rosse Lane on Captiva Island, to Cabbage Key.
Bob Rando co-owns Captiva Cruises with his wife, Jenny Rando, and Brad and Leslie Junghans. They also operate from the Pink Elephant Dock on Boca Grande.
“Lady Chadwick, she was in dry dock for our biannual Coast Guard inspection,” Bob Rando said of the boat’s whereabouts on Sept. 28, 2022, when Hurricane Ian struck. “Every two years, you have to take the boat out of the water and inspect the hull. That’s what we were in the middle of doing.”
The boat was on concrete pilings at Gulf Marine Yacht Works on Main Street in Fort Myers Beach, when the storm surge floated the boat about 450 feet away.
“We had the propeller shafts taken out,” Rando said. “It ended up tangled in a bunch of other boats, and then it got stuck under a building. It miraculously didn’t fall on it. But it fell all around it. The building didn’t crush the boat. We had to wait a long period of time for the debris to be cleared around it.
“The storm was Sept. 28. We really couldn’t start working on it much until February. We had the big cranes come and pick it up to set it up on blocks, so we could start working on it.”
As Hurricane Ian approached, Captiva Cruises dispatched the Santiva and Playtime, which are 45-foot, 49-passenger catamarans, along with the Adventure, a 40-foot, 24-passenger sailboat. Those boats were moved up the Caloosahatchee River to Alva, where they rode out the storm.
Those decisions saved the company from being put out of commission, as they returned to action in January.
Rando said replacing the Lady Chadwick would have cost about $2 million. The owners instead opted to make about $200,000 worth of repairs.
Getting the repairs done wasn’t easy, either.
“The shipyard went out of business and closed after the storm,” Rando said. “It was basically on a vacant piece of land. We had to bring in all the tradesmen ourselves, the welder and the mechanics and the sandblasters. We kind of took over as the general contractor and hired outside people to come in and put the boat back together.”
Day trip cruises start at $30 for dolphin tours and $45 for trips to Cabbage Key or Useppa Island.
“Our first official trip on it was for the [Island Hopper] Songwriter’s Festival,” Rando said of the Lady Chadwick. “We had a few of the songwriters on there. Now we’re back into our regularly scheduled cruises.”
