Skydive Sebastian thanks the City of Marathon for being such gracious hosts!

The turnout for this years Keys Boogie far exceeded the largest turnout we ever had in past years. Over 250 skydivers attended the Keys Boogie this year!

Perfect weather and the possibility that the Marathon Airport Authorities will not permit us to hold the Boogie next year had a lot to do with the huge turnout of skydivers for this years event. Unlike some past years, the loads started turning back to back on Thursday morning and by Friday we were turning back to back loads with both Otters and definately needed the third aircraft in the rotation by Saturday Morning.

Everyone looks forward to beach jumps at the Keys Boogie and this year we did more beach jumps than ever before. On Friday we set a record. We sent six otter loads and two helicopter loads to the beach. The constant canopy openings were described by some as being like fireworks in the sky. More than half the boogie participants jumped into the beach that afternoon. The video posted here caught a lot of the landing at the beach. Check it out.

By Saturday we were turning back to back loads with all three aircraft and thanks to the amazing work of an understaffed manifest desk, everyone kept filling the planes and making enough jumps to keep everyone happy. A sincere thanks to everyone who worked manifest and kept up with the all the skydivers lining up to get on loads.

There were plenty of organizers on hand to keep everyone busy. Roger Ponce de Leon, Carl Daugherty, Derek Thomas and Lyle Presse organized RW jumps throughout the weekend. Freefliers were organized by Jim Harris, luis Prinetto, and Jason Jerusalem. Perry Trowbridge, a regular at the Keys Boogie, organized one wingsuit flock after another.

Lots of thanks go out to all the organizers for keeping the operations at the Boogie well organized and safe and for making sure everyone had great skydives.

Our slideshows and video were captured by numerous videographers including Norman Kent, Harry Parker, Yanaton Ran, Kazuyuki Oyama, Jason Jerusalem, Matt Hoover, Luis Alvarez, Kai Sherwood, Carlos Acosta, Dave Ferguson, Jessica Kluetmeier and Kendra Sharik. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the stills and video of the event. Everyone's contribution is going to help Yonatan make a DVD worth adding to every Keys Boogie participant's collection.

Scotty Carbone of the CarboneZone brought his grills and kept everone from starving serving Scotty's regular offerings of terrific boogie food.

The Saturday night poolside party included dinner at the Sombrero Resort, music and lots of friends catching up with eachother. Awards were given out to Jennifer Eggleston, Eric Love and Harry Parker for all of their tireless contributions to making Sebastian the fun and friendly DZ it has become. In addition, one of our most dedicated skydivers, Marco Raad was honored for repeatly flying in from Mexico to keep skydiving with all of his friends at Skydive Sebastian and for being such a good friend of Skydive Sebastian.

One of our skydivers, unfortunately, collided with the powerlines at on the airport perimeter. Although the accident suspended landings on the airport field for the balance of Sunday afternoon, Amanda Owens quickly arranged to have the balance of the loads for the day continue landing at Sombrero Beach. The end result being that all of the skydivers who remained at the boogie throughout Sunday were treated to beach loads for the balance of the day.

All in all this was the most successful Keys Boogie Skydive Sebastian has ever sponsored. With a skydiver turnout that surpassed all expectations and a terrific vibe among all of our skydivers, it was just a great time in the Florida Keys!

As we told everyone the chances of repeating the Boogie next year appear slim. We will start early trying to convince the authorities that additional commercial traffic shouldn't keep the boogie from being allowed and if our efforts are to no avail we will be investigating even more exciting alternatives to the Florida Keys.

If this turns out to have been the last Keys Boogie, we want to thank everyone for having made it the biggest Keys Boogie in the history of Skydive Sebastian and hope you'll join us for whatever alternative we plan next year!