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Nevilledog

(50,660 posts)
Tue Jul 21, 2020, 06:41 PM Jul 2020

Boat Parties Are the New Way to Spread COVID-19 in Florida

https://www.thedailybeast.com/miami-south-florida-boat-parties-spread-covid-19

MIAMI—Seven young women stood on the dock of the Sea Isles Marina near downtown Miami around one o’clock in the afternoon on Sunday. One, who said her first name was Lola and refused to provide a last name, placed her hand over her eyes to block out the blistering sun. Dressed in a black bikini with black sheer pants, Lola turned to one of her companions.

“We need to find pier number one,” she said. “That’s where the captain told me the boat is.”

Nearly every Sunday since the pandemic shut down bars and nightclubs in Miami-Dade, Lola and her pals have chartered a small yacht for an afternoon getaway on Biscayne Bay to commiserate, have drinks, and dance from the bow to the stern, she told The Daily Beast. “It’s the only thing we can do,” Lola said. “Restaurants are not even doing dine-in. So why not get on a boat?”

Lola and her crew are among hundreds, if not thousands, of boat enthusiasts who are taking to the sea to escape the confines of life under COVID-19 in a global epicenter of the deadly disease. Over the course of an hour, five groups—not massive ones, usually of five to 10 people—descended on Sea Isles Marina to board chartered vessels that cruise local waters from Sunny Isles Beach on the north end of Miami-Dade to Key Biscayne on the south end.

According to local boating enthusiasts, charter brokers, and marina operators, recreational boating is experiencing one of its busiest summer seasons in recent memory, along with a high number of boat parties where precautions such as wearing masks and social distancing are nearly impossible to enforce.

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