Esperanza’s Launch

The view from Ralph Woodring’s house, close by the sandy shore on the north side of Sanibel Island, Florida, is of sparkling San Carlos Bay. There’s a little scrub-covered island out there, and beyond it in the distance, the green and red buoys marking the Intracoastal Waterway. On weekends the Waterway hosts an endless parade of noisy powerboats but on this calm midweek morning in late March, the bay is largely undisturbed and ripples with a pleasant whisper against the pilings of Ralph’s dock.

Close your eyes and it is not hard to imagine that the view from here isn’t too much different from what it was in 1888. That is when Ralph’s grandfather Sam, a Pennsylvania blacksmith and Union Army veteran, established a homestead on Sanibel. His son, also named Sam, built the sturdy house of rot-resistant Florida pine in 1918.

The house has been fixed up as needed after confronting more than a century of hurricanes. Since being pushed off its foundation during the storm surge of Hurricane Ian in 2022, the house now stands 6' farther back from shore than it did before. But it’s still there, where it belongs, stout and defiant. This thumb-like protrusion into the bay is named for the Woodring family. You’ll find it on nautical chart 11427 and others of the waters around Florida’s west coast barrier islands. On Sanibel this place is known as Woodring Point, although the chart adds an “s,” making it “Woodrings Point.”

Woodring Point is where Ralph, born in 1937, grew up. It is where he still lives with his wife, Jean, and all his memories of now long-gone island characters, the fishermen and netmakers, the bootleggers, lighthouse keepers, and hotel owners. But most of all, Ralph’s thoughts remain dominated by fishing, by boats, and by how folks got by in the old days that seem at once so recent and so long ago.

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