By Joaquin Brant

Great entertainment venues sometimes spring from a lucky chance; in the case of PonTunes, it was a series of inspirations. Just over a year ago, Pompey Mansilla and his wife, Debbie, tried to rent a boat for Memorial Day weekend in Key Largo from their usual source, a friend named Kevin. No luck, though: Kevin was moving to Ohio and had just closed his boat rental business – in fact, he was trying to sell it.

Pompey made a decision almost on the spot. The new bridge to Key Largo, and the soon-to-be-completed highway from Florida City, made the location on Jewfish Creek, halfway across the bridge, very enticing. Within a few hours, he was in the boat rental business and his long-time business partner, Rick Betancourt, was in too.

“Having a connection with the ocean, the coral reefs, was important to us personally,” says Pompey. “but we rented boats instead of buying one, for the convenience. We liked the Keys more than going on Miami Bay, and it’s only 40 minutes from Miami if you take the Turnpike. And it just seems crazy that so many people in Miami don’t know the ocean at their doorstep.”

Pompey and Rick set out to give would-be ocean-goers in Broward and Dade a way to get out on the water, minus the headaches of boat ownership. Any worries about the recession, and people’s desire to go boating, were quickly dispelled. “Getting two families or 12 friends together for a full-day rental is a lot cheaper than owning a boat,” Pompey points out.

Miami residents thought so too. In short order, “We went from the four boats that Kevin sold us, to a fleet of 27. We maintain them constantly, so there’s always a few in our yard. But there are days when we have 20 boats out with people in them.” Rick and Pompey took to greeting each other with a four-finger (for the original four boats) salute.

To keep track of all those boats, Rick and Pompey not only put the requisite GPS in each boat, but also a homing device – and on a large-screen flat panel back  at PonTunes, each boat is tracked. “We are always in contact with our renters on the water, we know where they are,” explains Pompey. “If they need help, we can send a boat right to them.”

With success came a problem: where to keep the boats. They bought the land along the PonTunes dock, then added the adjoining restaurant, which includes a tiki bar, grill, and both indoor and outside sections. “Now we sometimes get 200 parties through the restaurant and bar in a night.”

The new Jewfish Creek bridge was both a blessing and a curse. “We’re 65 feet below the eye view of passing drivers, so we looked for a way to really visible.”  It was a major marketing challenge. Then  another good happenstance: they stumbled upon a 105-foot schooner, once the subject of a Walter Cronkite special, languishing behind its owner’s home in Key Largo.  In short order, Pompey and Rick “bought it, poured 2,000 man-hours of fixup work into it, and rechristened it the Queen Anne’s Revenge II.”  The first QAR was the famous Blackbeard predator ship that he took from the British and used to attack cargo vessels for 7 infamous months.”  Now the QAR II  docks alongside the restaurant, and its tall mast is visible from the bridge, making it easier to find PonTunes from the highway.

They also put together “Big Al’s Fishing Tournament” in October, despite a still-small staff, with everybody pitching in, including their wives washing dishes at the restaurant – on Mrs. Mansilla’s birthday. “We only hired when we really felt the person was going to be great with our customers. So in the early months we were sometimes shorthanded.”

Rick and Pompey hit on another way to attract customers: music. “We had a regular customer who, it turned out, owned the famous Tobacco Road (the first business in Miami to be awarded a liquor license). He was kind enough to connect us with Queen of the Scene and DJ Oski, who booked bands for him. Within weeks, , PonTunes was featuring bands from around the country. “We took six weeks to put together the first annual Largopalooza festival. We had 32 bands on four stages – and we drew 3,000 people.”

And the music is always unpredictable, but good. One day it’s Latin, then pop, then reggae followed by country and a sing-along. On a typical weekend afternoon and evening, there is a steady stream of cars pulling into the PonTunes parking lot. Music aficionados mingle with sunbaked boaters returning from their day on a rented vessel, locals who make it a regular hangout, bikers sampling Key West Ale and blackened tuna bites at the bar, and families arriving for a sunset cruise on Blackwater Sound.