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Numbers unlike before, but few truly complain

A fear of rain keeps many away, but hundreds still turn out for the annual fest at the Hernando Beach Yacht Club, sampling food and visiting vendors.

By LOGAN NEILL
Published October 10, 2005

	[Times photo: Max Bittle]
	Max Kaplan, 1, of Spring Hill examines a peel-and-eat shrimp while at the Hernando Beach Seafood Festival on Sunday. His grandparents Lou and Nancy Kaplan brought him to the 22nd annual event at the Hernando Beach Yacht Club. Previous years have drawn more than 6,000 visitors, but this year's two-day festival attracted a relatively smaller crowd.

As the afternoon sun beat down, Sid and Audra Taylor found a shady spot near the front of the food court at the Hernando Beach Seafood Festival. The respite not only gave the couple a breather from the heat but also allowed them to dive into a lunch of fresh grilled shrimp.

"These are so good," said Sid Taylor as he bit into one of the tasty orange crustaceans. "We really weren't planning to stay long, but we might just end up changing our minds. There's some other things I'd like to try."

Such sentiments seemed to be on the minds of hundreds who stopped by the Hernando Beach Yacht Club on Sunday to look over craft displays, sample wares from area restaurants and listen to live music.

Although the two-day event has drawn upward of 6,000 people in the past, club commodore Sue Cosenza said the crowds seemed to be down this year.

"On Saturday, we kept getting calls from people asking if it was raining out here," Cosenza said. "Apparently it was raining in Spring Hill, so they figured we were getting it, too. We never got a drop."

Few of the 30 or so food and craft vendors had any major complaints Sunday afternoon.

"It's not as busy as I had hoped, but then every festival goes through tough times," said Bob Gould of Gulfport, a vendor for eight years at the seafood festival.

Gould, whose Nautical Odyssey booth carried a variety of nautical art and knickknacks, said only a few vendors who were at the event Saturday didn't return Sunday.

"If you price your merchandise right, people will buy it," Gould said. "That's the way this business is. You roll with the punches."

Now in its 22nd year, the seafood festival got its start as a way of drumming up membership for the Hernando Beach Yacht Club. Though she didn't expect many membership applicants from the event, Cosenza said, the proceeds would go a long way toward improving the club's facilities.

"Anybody who's involved in it knows that there's a lot of work involved in doing this every year," Cosenza said. "But it's really worth it."

[Last modified October 10, 2005, 01:18:12]