Watch a bear take a ride on a boat at this Florida yacht club. ‘I have seen it all!’
Several folks got a surprising visit from a furry creature at a yacht club in Southwest Florida Wednesday evening.
According to widespread cellphone footage taken by a handful of onlookers, a black bear managed to climb aboard an empty catamaran docked at Naples Sail and Yacht Club on the Gulf Coast and stay awhile.
READ MORE: Bear enters Florida home and eats Trader Joe’s ice cream
Facebook user Debbie Thompson posted a video from one angle:
“I have seen it all now!” she wrote in the caption. “Forget the cute manatee and dolphins. Now we have bears!!”
A woman in her party jokingly comments: “Those people are going to find bear scat all over their boat.”
“He’s so cute!” remarks a child.
“They’re wild animals,” says a man, seriously.
Another FB user, Mary Sarver, had a different vantage point of the bear, seen in her brief clip sniffing around the stern. She wrote that she “couldn’t believe” the sight, and noted that the animal “looked hungry.”
Yet another bystander, Todd Dillman, the owner of TowBoat U.S. in Southwest Florida, told Fox 35 Orlando that he also saw the creature while he was towing a barge.
Dillman witnessed it first swimming across a canal to get to the vessel. After watching the bear climb around the boat for about an hour, he said he called the authorities to have it removed.
READ MORE: Three-legged bear barges into Florida home
Meteorologist Matt Devitt of WINK News shared the boat captain’s video on his Facebook, with the simple caption in all caps: “BEAR ON A BOAT! Only in Florida.”
If you see a bear in public, you are asked to leave it be and contact the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Wildlife Alert Hotline at 888-404-3922.
This story was originally published October 6, 2023 at 1:47 PM.
