Help Ski-A-Rees recover from Hurricane Helene & Milton

Long post incoming

TLDR: Our site is in bad shape but we will rebuild and perform for you all as soon as we can! May not be this fall though, we will have to see.

So, we were supposed to have our first show tomorrow but Helene had other plans!

I believe this is the worst we have ever been hit with hurricane damage at Ski-A-Rees and the hurricane was 100 miles west of us and made landfall some 200 miles away! The storm surge was real!

A few of us made our way out by boat Friday late morning to assess the damage. It brought us to tears to see the devastation to our ski site that we all have put so much of our blood, sweat, and tears to build a beautiful site to perform for you all!

Our costume shed got torn up and strung costumes all across our site in the water, in trees, some 300+ feet away. We recovered all we could see on Friday while we were assessing damage and got them to the mainland to get them rinsed and washed to hopefully save.

Another 2 shed door got ripped off and strung things across our site. A sliding glass door on our clubhouse came out and broke and allowed water into our clubhouse. The inside of clubhouse is a total loss. Fridges, stoves, freezers, gas grill, paperwork, first aid kits, some concessions items, and many other things!

We believe water to have been about 3 feet in our clubhouse and sheds based on water lines and stuff that got wet and stuff that didn’t.

Our stage got lifted up about 3-4 feet from where it normally sits. All still toegether, just lifted up and at an incline from one side to the other. We are hoping we can save it. We will have to see. Definitely a lot of man hours and repairs in our future.

The walkway to our main dock is half in the mangroves, and half lifted up. We are hoping we can save this as well.

As for our main dock, one portion stayed in place the furthest away from the shore. Pylons are leaning a little and need to be straighten. The other portion of our main dock made it some 150 feet away at our neighbor, the Sarasota Outboard Club. It is still in tact, but the floats are sitting on some pylons and we are suspecting some may be punctured. We will have to assess that some more but think we can get that back in the water with some help from a crane.

All of this stuff is fixable and repairable, it just takes time and money. We have relied on the donations from our fans at our shows and for the giving challenge every other year! We build or purchase everything at our site by the generosity of you as well as team member due!

Now for some good news! Our jump made it through but lost an anchor or two we believe! Our fairly new aluminum bleachers made it through fine, just need to move the 2 sets of our auxiliary bleachers as the water pushed them back! Buildings and sheds are still there. Some a little out of place. All can be fixed and repaired!

I know we have many fans on our barrier islands that are dealing with much of the same or even worse! We are thinking about you and hope for the best!

If you made it this far and would like to donate we have setup a gofundme And would love your support!

We will be using fund to help rebuild our site to be able to host shows again!

I am president of the ski team, Brad Satterlee