The Old Anchor Marina was sold last spring to a rather shady individual who allegedly financed the operation through a rather lucrative business. Buying and selling radioactive Rolexes and other jewelry items of questionable parentage up in the Houston area. And of course speculation has it that the place could be a laundromat of sorts...

First thing the new owner, a swaggering, rotund little fella, did was immediately rid the place of all the vermin that had been accumulating there during the prior regime, dispersing them to the four winds. Some moved to other area dives and hovels, trailer parks and ramshackle housing, to be ultimately scattered once again after Hurricane Dolly flattened and transported all but the most well built and the lucky.

Dock Boy abandoned Sea Lyin', and she sank at a dock where they moved her surreptitiously one night.......

....Jack and Barb (Sea Shack) moved to another, friendlier finger, and Mark roared off in his motor home, first finding haven a few days in the Wal Mart parking lot before moving on to the Travelers, eventually picked up by his parole officer and the constabulary, landing in the big house again to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Who knows what happened to the rest.

Next, the newly named  Pelicans Point Marina (doesn't that inspire confidence in a boat owner....yea, I'm gonna want to take my boat to a known Pelican haunt....jeez, Wilma wouldja just take a lookat the size of that turd pile on our bimini?) began the process of siezing, evicting and "disappearing" the collection of mostly derelict and abandoned vessels that were remaining in the slips. 

The new owner got the idea that he wanted to build condominiums where the old trailers sat, condos that would hang out over the already crowded public waters in the turning basin of the fingers. He decided that then they would just close off and gate the cul-du-sac at the end of Tarpon street.

We attended that planning and zoning meeting when this rather revolutionary and assinine idea was presented to the city.

The Pelicans Point representative showed up with a huge attitude, and of course the ruling infrastructure of Port Uglyville, not one to be challenged (never mind the host of other legitimate concerns surrounding this) immediately nixed Pelicans plans......

In retaliation Pelicans Point raised both their slip fees and trailer park fees to ten dollars a foot.....cut off the cable TV and chained the boat ramp.

That'll show the bastards.

So the public began to exit the new Pelicans Point Marina, South Padre Island (someone should give them a geography lesson) like rats off a sinking ship, and now it is a virtual ghost establishment, clean restrooms, deep water slips (yep, some are more than five feet deep) and all.

They even got sideways with me when they tried to levy dock fees for the plundered SJ28.....Of course I only purchased the plunder rights from Mark.

And of course I told them they could take the bill and quite carefully place it in a part of their posterior anatomy where the sun just does not shine.

As surely as we watched the fall of the House of Anchor, we will just as quickly (perhaps even more so)  get to see the implosion of Pelicans Point. They have alienated the community, and the community has likewise turned it's back on them. Not too good of a success plan.

Word travels fast in little coastal communities