Brad Batchelor started the TSBB in 1997 and I found my way here in 1999, by which time Todd Johnson had assumed control of TSBB, from Brad.
One of Todd's friends was Gary Hansen, whose TSBB handle was, "Doc Holiday".
Doc was a big booster in the early days of TSBB, starting and participating in such '90's Internet innovations as: IRL Chat. (Internet Relay Chat).
In those days, on Saturday nights, there might be upwards of 15 -20 people all participating at the same time, which made it hard to keep up with different conversational threads.
This frequently lead to hilarious misunderstandings, when one thread response, was confused with a different thread.
One of the more entertaining events on those nights, was Doc perennially hitting the backspace key (instead of the delete key) to correct text, which was also the IRL disconnect command.
He'd hop back online, flustered and cursing, :P but always good-natured about the idea of IRL chats.
He also came up with the idea of "Meade Madness" an informal sailing event involving several sailboats on Lake Meade, located in Nevada and Arizona.
He'd write up their Lake Meade adventures on board his Catalina 22 Mar-Gar-ETA an amalgam of his wife's name, his name and Estimated Time of Arrival, which was usually: Late.
One of his signature looks was a constantly worn, red bandana, used for all kinds of different things; the original all-purpose rag.
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Doc and his Catalina 22.
He also devised and promoted, the idea of impromptu, informal sailing get-togethers, all around the country.
He died tragically, hit by a boom and was found unconscious in the water and finally succumbed to his injuries, after several days in intensive care. :(
In memoriam to his idea, some sailing events sprang up around the country.
There was:
Meade Madness.
PIKL (Party In Kentucky Lake).
BOOTS (Bail Out On Texoma Sailing).
BEER (Backwater Environmental Escape Rendezvous) in Pensacola.
To honor the man and his idea, it was decided to tie a bandana off the bow pulpits of our sailboats, as though his spirit was guiding our boats.
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Urchin sporting her bandana.
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Mike Howell in Magic, with his.
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Wayne and Connie Howard on Unole with theirs.
The BEER Cruise, was inspired by Doc's idea and devised by the GRITS (Gulf Regional Interstate Trailer Sailors), a group comprised of people in several southern states like Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, and they generally met in Pensacola, Florida, for sailing weekends.
I'll probably miss some names, but members included:
Shane Wallace, John Roddy, Ben Allen, Tom Mooney, Jeff Fuchs, Brian "Two Beers" Mulhaney (Escambia County Sheriff who was continually astonished that every guy he stopped, had had only "two beers") :o and some other assorted characters like Dexter and "Cap'n Ron".
They held the first BEER Cruise the year Doc passed, and the next year I was invited to come, but had severe truck problems that year and didn't make it, until the following year (2003).
All the BEER folks were very gracious and inviting and soon, there were boaters coming in from California, Texas, Utah, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Indiana, Illinois and Canada, to participate.
It was one long, floating party, ;D sailing from one part of the Santa Rosa Sound to another, usually by way of restaurants, bars, and pubs, but also on deserted stretches of beach.
Good People and Good Times; I looked forward to it every year, even though it had it's logistical challenges.
It was in early June and families with kids in school could rarely make it. Early June in Pensacola, is not without its rainy weather and the occasional thunder storm. :o
But it was all endured in good humor, in return for the finish on Tuesday, when the Blue Angels practiced their amazing precision routines
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There are none better.
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They'd fly right over our masts.
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Check out Urchin's bow bandana.
And for all that, there won't be a BEER Cruise, this year. :(
So, what happened?!? ???
I think the two main things, were the increasing success of the Florida 120 and indifferent promotion of the BEER Cruise.
The FL 120 is in May, when the weather is a little better for sailing and with it being so close to the BEER Cruise dates, many people just can't make both events.
So the one event encroached on the other event.
The principals, like Shane Wallace promoted the BEER Cruise primarily on Facebook and not the TSBB, which may have affected the number of people knowing about it.
When I recently spoke with Shane, he said he felt like he was the last man standing. :-X
They had only had about 15 or so boats attending in the past few years and in 2025, (the 24th year of the BEER Cruise) they only had 5 boats show up.
So he decided to end it. :(
Whoa!! :o
That's a far cry from this example, back in 2004! :o
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That said, he said he is considering a little cruise at a different time, perhaps after Labor Day. (While the water is still warm and the bars are still open!!) ;)
I was thoroughly bummed to hear of this, :( since I was hoping to make it to a BEER Cruise, this year.
Been missing it badly the past several years, due to building a boat.
Even had a plan in place, to fix any boat damage after the FL 120, just so I could get back to Pensacola in time.
Doc is only a memory, and now the BEER Cruise is also only a memory.
And I want to make more memories.
Still considering all this . . . . .
In the mean time, any of you who have memories of Doc, or of the BEER Cruise, or any of the other sailing events, why don't you post them? ???
Charles Brennan
I remember the rattlesnake story! Wish that one was still accessible....
As mentioned in a recent post my memories of B.E.E.R are fading. I do remember arriving at the first one (2010?) clueless and crewless. It was a little late in the afternoon, I was told to park my boat/trailer in the lot then put my mast up and launch. Not many people around but I remember Mark Milam coming over and helping me with my mast and giving me an overview of the cruise process. I greatly appreciated that. Later I reciprocated when he needed information about scalloping in St Joe Bay and Black's Island. As a forty year veteran of that I knew the process well and helped him and his family have a very successful trip.
2011 I brought Sheri with me. We got there a little late and the other late arrival that year was Charlie Mclemore and Issy and that's always a treat. That was the year of the Deep Water Horizon spill and launching was held up for hours to allow the contract boats to go first. In that regard remember walking down the road at Quiet Water with the line of network satellite trucks with their crews under tents playing cards. When asked what they were doing it was "just hanging out waiting for one of the talking heads to find a tar ball so we can take a picture". It seems tar balls were few and far between but a lot of dough was spent looking for them. Also remember missing the skippers meeting that year, missing the vital info on approaching sailboat cove and running aground by approaching too far to the East. It seems like that year Shane had a debate with the F & W enforcement officer about registration of inflatable dinks. Could have been that Louisiana and Florida had a different philosophy regarding that and I believe Shane lost, but avoided incarceration (barely?)
We met an older guy from Georgia who, when Sheri had charmed him, offered lodging whenever we wanted as a jumping off point for hiking trips in North Georgia. Neither of us can remember his name but a great and kind guy.
That was our last trip, the scheduling after that was not consistent with the family trip to Mexico Beach so it just didn't work out for us.
And the credit for the Photo in the prior post goes to the guy who had a Macgregor 26M who took several hundred pics I think, but I can't remember his name.
Frank, I'm thinking, Sam Hunter?? ???
My problem with ALL the BEER Cruises, is that I get introduced to a ton of people, while I've heavily imbibed Planter's Punch and can never remember anybody's name!! :-[
When I started going on the FL 120, I tried introducing myself and people like Steve Gully would say:
"Yeah, I've met you 4 or 5 times, on BEER Cruises."
DOHHH!!! :-[
Ah, Well.
Charles Brennan
Quote from: Charles Brennan on Apr 05, 2026, 04:16 PMFrank, I'm thinking, Sam Hunter?? ???
The Photographer who took all the pictures was Brian Hart. Neither Sheri nor I can remember the guy from Georgia's name. She thinks he was a retired professor who lived in Gainesville.
I had the same problems with names from the cruise. As I recall in the old days they had a web page with a Skippers list that had boat type, name, crew, etc. Wish I had made a copy of that when it was up.
I do remember the great food cooked by the GRITS crew on the day before we left to start the cruise. It's too bad that it ain't happening this year. We had no plans to go but I know you did.
You'd meet the most interesting people on that cruise. I always had trouble with the schedule and was always juggling one thing or another to get there. Sonya and I didn't attend last year but we were in the area and met up with Shane and Renee and Wayne at PCB. We had a good time and it was good to see them again but I'm getting too old to sleep on the sandbar so we got a place really close to the State Park and used that as a fixed base operation. It worked pretty well! Wish I had tried that 20 yrs ago!
Speaking of bandanas, I have three on my boat. One that is almost pink these days, one that is the first one's replacement and one that I received at a BEER cruise as a commemorative bandana for "Doc".
I was glad to get the Victoria and join the bandana crew, as there wasn't a place to put one with the catboat. The Vick had a pulpit rail! Alas, that was a fiasco and never materialized, so in some means I missed out with the bandana thing, but carried it with me. I was devastated when Doc died. One of those things where the world you know it is now going to be different. He used to do a Penetrol shine on his boat I remember. Yes, a long time ago, far, far, away.
2004 was my first BEER cruise. TSBBers took up a collection and sent me money for a plane ticket so I could come sing for them. I sent Charles a tape of me singing some favorites, and he (insanely!) stuck exactly to the keys I sang in and learned tortuous chords to accompany me on guitar. It sure was a lot of fun!
Noemi, That reminded me of one of my favorite BEER stories.
We had already done a lot of singing at the dock on Friday night and I figured that was basically it for the weekend. But these things tend to happen on a BEER Cruise and we got a TON of rain on Monday. :o This forced all of us inside the main room at the Pirate's Cove restaurant/pub. Tom Mooney asked if he could hear Noemi sing a little and there was no good reason to refuse him.
Besides, I wanted to hear her again, too.
We started off with a toast to Doc from Charlie Jones. Then a harmonica player named Mike and a guitar player named Dennis, joined us. He had a song book full of chords and words. Don't know if it was his Skill Level or Beer Level, but he seemed to know only about ¾ of the chords or words, to anything he attempted! :P
Hey! ;) We were all Beginners once. Just seems like some of us remain Beginners, longer than others! ::)
Or maybe he was just a little Budweiser Impaired! ;D
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Noemi started weaving her magic, with her wondrous vocal talents. I kept jumping in there, with comic relief tunes involving Unrequited Love for Vertically Challenged Athletes, just to keep the whole audience from accidentally falling in love with Noemi, you understand. :P That last song really tickled Damien, although in all fairness, he'd imbibed enough beer by then, I'm pretty sure "Ring around the Rosie" would have had largely the same effect on him! ;D
My personal favorite for the night and something that gave me a lot of insight into Noemi's Character, was a cover of the old Carol King standard: "Will you still love me, tomorrow?"
We had decided to do it as a slow torch song, where the principal question was not one of doubt, like the way Carol King does it, but one of resignation, as if the singer already knows (to her dismay) the answer. When you are backing up someone on guitar like that, you let the singer phrase the song her own way, to wring the most emotion possible out of the song.
That's why no one dances to Mozart, for example.
The beat isn't steady enough to dance to, since the phrasing is different, in every bar.
Slow arpeggiating on the guitar, gives you enough freedom to support a fine singer doing just that.
Noemi's rendition apparently inspired Charlie Jones to take his then-wife Laura, into his arms and hit the dance floor. Years of bar-playing reflex kicked in and I changed the arpeggiating to a more structured beat, to support the two Dancing Lovers, but it happened at the expense of Noemi's delicate phrasing. After a brief catch, when she heard what I was doing and understood why, she went into the same dance-tune mode to make the song more "danceable". All this went on without a single word, or even so much as a glance between us. That's when you know you're making Good Music, people.
It was good enough to hold the crowd, until the proprietor finally had to kick us all out so she could close up for the night! We repaired outside to a lighted area and continued our little concert. After Noemi had poured out all her Soul, and I had poured out the remnants of my Dignity, :-[ we finally called it a night.
It was a good night, pouring rain and all. :)
True Story,
Charles Brennan
It WAS a good night, and a great trip.
And oh, Damian's laugh!
2004 was, I believe, my first BEER cruise in my Siren, "Telepyleia". I was sailing solo for the first time in my life, and I remember the red bandanas so I'm sure Doc had already passed. My next BEER cruise (not sure what year, but it was a year or two later, I brought a freind, and Noemi sailed with us one day with quite some wind, probably should have reefed but we had plenty of rail meat so we just had lots of fun. She sang some songs for us which was very well received, very memorable.
I remember you that time! I didn't know it was your first solo! Well, congrats on that one. I met the crew on Sand Island ONE of those years, when CB played the Meanie song. That was the most thrilling sail I've had on the catboat until the 2025 FL 120. Both downwind from the State Park in Big Lagoon and at an accelerated pace ;D The second was much easier because of the boom lift I'd rigged up because of the FIRST SAIL. You see, I was going fast, and the boom on S R Cat is VERY LONG. It sticks out two feet past the transom, and I watched that boom out to the port side the WHOLE TRIP the 1st time, waiting on it to dig in a wave top and cause all manner of problems. It didn't and I was really glad and amazed that it didn't, at the same time. Great sail both times.