Jersey Shore Pirates: How to Avoid the Scallywags

For the past few summers, one of the ladies in my local Mom’s Club arranges a Pirate Adventure for our kids, essentially booking a whole pirate themed party boat just for our group. What could be better than Oh Hoying and Arging for an hour on the high seas of Brick, New Jersey? While it might seem that any old company with a pirate ship will do, I recently found out that not all pirates are equal.  While there is not much summer left, I hope this post can serve as a future guide to any sails out to sea and to help alleviate any timber shivering.

Just this week we boarded the Jersey Girl with The Pirates on the Manasquan.  Conveniently located on Route 70 in Brick, this adventure begins at the dock behind The River Rock Restaurant.  Its location provides access to a nice clean bathroom and a bar inside the restaurant that filled my water bottle with ice cold water for free.  We checked in with some nice young men who gave the kids name tags with generated pirate names. Their website asks parties to arrive early for dress up and face painting, but all we received were some Oriental Trading style tattoos and stickers.  Naturally there was pirate gear available for sale and I ended buying two pirate swords for $6 apiece, one of which broke shortly after setting sail.  We pulled out of the dock with two guys who called themselves pirates but looked more like the dock and dine guys at the Windansea. One told a pirate story, sans pirate voice or vocabulary, which fell a little flat.  Things picked up when we ran ashore on a small island in the Manasquan River, where the children got to sneak up on a sleeping pirate and steal his treasure.  He woke up as soon as we were all safely aboard the ship and proceeded to chase us on his Jet ski.  Once he was alongside our boat, the kids doused this scallywag with their water cannons.  Once we defeated the pirate, we divvied up the stolen treasure and rocked out to One Direction.  Back at the dock, we settled in and ate the lunches we had packed from home on the picnic tables on the sand.  Overall, a fun way to spend afternoon.  Some of us, however, could not help to compare our high seas adventure with last year’s pirate afternoon.

The Jersey Shore Pirates Pirate Adventure is located on Princeton Avenue in Brick.  We arrived early, got our faces painted and rifled through a costume trunk in order to be transformed in to little pirates. Each child received an individual pirate name.  The crew of the Sea Gypsy II resembled Bones and Sharkey and really hammed it up. Before boarding the ship, the children went through pirate training, complete with a review of pirate jargon and face snarling.  The children were mandated to respond to the crew with an “Aye! Aye!” and to help battle Stinky Pete with water cannons. There was no small island to land on in the Metedconk River, but a sunken treasure was found and shared during the adventure.

Honestly, any pirate ship is a good time. However, having sampled both the Sea Gypsy and the Jersey Girl, I have to say that The Jersey Shore Pirates and their Pirate Adventure is a better bang for the buck.  Book early and enjoy the ride Mateys!

This is an original post for Jersey Moms Blog. All opinions are that of the blogger and do not necessarily reflect JMB.