CLEVELAND, Ohio – Author and event producer Jim Kukral – he calls himself Admiral Jim – is preparing to launch a new kind of sunset cruise on the Cuyahoga River. His new concept Cleveland Floaters will be an immersive, story-driven cruise that blends live theater, comedy, music, audience participation and group therapy.
The first of four or five cruises for 2026 will begin at the end of June aboard the Holiday, a 65-foot, steel-hulled vessel with a capacity of 60 people. Docked at Collision Bend (the infamous river bend off Scranton Road, not the nearby Collision Bend Brewery) the vintage boat is U.S. Coast Guard inspected and certified.
This is a three-hour experience and it’s more than a simple cruise. The show begins when guests walk through the entrance gate to the dock and continues until their return to the parking lot at night’s end. While the plot line is still proprietary, the climax is a healing component where guests sink their worries to the bottom of the river.
During the cruise audience members are invited to write their worries — grief, cancer, heartbreak, anxiety — onto dissolvable paper. Then, at the mouth of the river they figuratively “sink the worry” in a bucket of river water…