Deputies cite 'pirates' for camping on island
SARASOTA COUNTY -- Donald Ridenbaugh and his friends do not remember who started the whole pirate motif. A skull tattoo here, a Jolly Roger flag there, and soon it had escalated to wearing knives on their belts almost every time they went out for an evening on the town.
For spring break, they took it a step further when they hacked their own pirate fort out of the Brazilian pepper on Jim Neville Preserve.
Preparations took four months.
They poached long-forgotten furniture from dozens of old campsites they found there, and moved out to the isle in late March. There was a kitchen with grills, pots and pans, a tiki bar stocked with booze, hand-drawn maps of the isle and, of course, skull-and-crossbones flags.
Eight days later, the pirate camp was raided by deputies who had decided to make an example of the 13 campers, who ranged in age from 17 to 22. They were charged with lighting illegal campfires and illegal camping on the preserve. Two campers, a 19-year-old woman and a 17-year-old boy, were charged with marijuana possession.
Now the county is citing the group's "sophisticated campsite network" as a reason to crack down on illegal campsites on uninhabited islands in the Gulf. The fire risk on the preserve is particularly high, county officials warn.
"For some time now, individuals have ignored the signs, and in some cases destroyed them, and have set up their campsites on the island park," deputies wrote in a report.
The deputies gave the campers a day to clean up the mess of broken bottles and trash, but they still left bottles and bags of junk behind.
Ridenbaugh, 19, says at least two deputies knew about the campsite long before the raid, and points to evidence of other, even more well-established campsites on the island as proof that he and his friends are being picked on.
He is also fighting his illegal camping charge, which carries a fine of $100 and $200 in court costs.
"As far was we knew, we weren't doing anything wrong," he said.
... And a bottle of rum
It took two dozen canoe trips delivering furniture and supplies -- including pirate swords and 24 gallons of tiki torch fuel -- for the campout the last week of March.
"There are dozens of old campsites on that island; that was another reason we thought it would be OK," Brandon Hiatt, 19, said.
The pirate camp, nicknamed Nassau Point, included a large fire pit and tiki torches that lit the way back to at least seven camping areas.
They would wake up in the morning, eat and then have a camp cleanup, Ridenbaugh said. Then the group would dress up as pirates and paddle their canoes to nearby Turtle Beach, offering their services to children, bikini-clad women and tourists who wanted to take a photo with some real Florida pirates.
At low tide, they took their plastic chairs to sandbars and chilled out. That's what some of them were doing the first time the sheriff's helicopter flew overhead.
They ate ramen noodles and a stock of 320 hot dogs. They made supply runs. At night they went into town to hang out, or stayed around the fire and drank, belting out pirate drinking songs.
The friends say they never would have been on the island on day eight if two sheriff's deputies had not told them earlier in the week that it was OK to camp on the island.
The first time, the friends say, was when residents at an apartment complex called the Sheriff's Office to complain the friends were walking across their property.
The residents told the deputy the friends weren't allowed to stay out there, but the deputy said it was "perfectly legal," according to Ridenbaugh.
Then Ridenbaugh's canoe disappeared, and he called the Sheriff's Office and made a report. At that time, he told the officers about the campsite.
The Sheriff's Office says it had complaints about the campers and knew they were there, but deputies could not find them from the air because the brush was so thick.
On March 29 the helicopter's thermal imaging equipment spotted 17 sources of fire -- the campsite and tiki torches.
"They destroyed that island, no question," Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. Chuck Lesaltato said. "They made porta potties. They cut a hole in the chair and put it over a hole in the ground."
The site remains a collection of trash, with piles of empty liquor bottles, ripped tents and mucked up plastic furniture.
People have been talking about it for weeks, after hearing a few news accounts that inaccurately cast it as a sort of a "Gilligan's Island" hideaway.
Even Sheriff Bill Balkwill went to the preserve to check out the campsite last weekend.
But there are also signs someone has stayed there since the pirates got busted.
As they returned to the site on Monday with a reporter, one of the tents left out there had been moved and set up again.
"What the hell?" said Tyler Martineau, 18. "We took this down."
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