I finally found it on Ebay for a reasonable price. The only thing that was wrong with it was that it had a black/white sail for the soldier's boat, instead of the blue one. That alone makes this set very rare: to my knowledge, this is the only set that has a blue small sail. I don't have this rare blue sail, but that's not a disaster ;-).

It's big, it has a cannon, it has boats, soldiers and pirates. Also very nice is the quite rare female pirate, found in not so many sets. Get one if you can!

One of my first and definitely favourite sets of all time. This set is, to my knowledge, the largest pirate base set, the second being the Skull Island. It has everything you would expect of a base, a large, well designed fortress with hanging bridges, a large basement for storage, a prison, a small dock, with a possibility of docking an entire ship ( which greatly increases its playability ) the BEST RAFT I've ever seen, a small boat , great number of quality minifigs both pirates and soldiers, parrot, monkey and many more...

All in all, 5 out of 5

If Lego should've released another Pirates set, it might be this one. I like this because it's a set that can you can play with for hours and not get bored of it. You get an island, boat, raft, rope bridges, palm trees, minifigs, and so much more. This is a great set and the 2009 sets should be just like this.

Overall 4 bricks : Lego used the raised baseplate to make an improved (??) or expanded version of Forbidden Island I think. It is a good set but maybe they exaggerated a bit by trying to put in too much extra's. Still it turned out to be a good looking set with a lot of nice features, sufficient minifigures and great playability although no price for originality. A bit overpriced maybe but probably because it is not easy to find.

Building 4 bricks : A nice set to built with a mix of Castle and Pirate pieces. It is not too hard to built this set, the mix of wall parts and small bricks give a nice building as result. Although I must add it is not a real building, more a defence hideout. On the left side a nice scaffold with canon with a small defence wall. For the Pirates you built a small raft with strange small sails, the Imperial Soldiers have boat with a real sail. The crane is a bit simple too, no possibilty to move it up or down and no winch. Overall a solid and good looking result, the green leafes give it a bit of a ruin look

Parts 5 bricks : The set offers 7 minifigures with sufficient weapons, a nice female Pirate, a parrot, a shark and a monkey. Other good parts are the 2 bridges, the stairs, the raised baseplate of course and overall a lot of usefull (Castle) parts. Also a lot of small banners and flags and the "Imperial" sail.

Playability 5 bricks : the set offers huge playabilty thanks to its looks, the boat and raft, the 7 minifigures and the total setup. Really nothing is missing for hours of fun.

Value 4 bricks : The average "sold" price on Bricklink is some €60,00 which is I think in order. Considering the quantity of parts maybe a bit high but since it seems to be a rare set and the playing possibilities probably justifiable. I paid less so for me the deal was fine.

The Largest set released in 1991 is also the largest pirate base available, it featured every single available minfig from the pirate range except one (Governor Broadside), this alone shows how much effort Lego put into creating variety in there early sets. Another example of this is shown with the inclusion of the second smaller base plate, very little is actually attached to this plate but its inclusion make the whole set look a lot more together. Also featured in this set is the first and only small blue sail and a nice pirate raft (though not as good as the Castaway’s Raft 6257 in 1989). The structure to this set is not quite as good if compared to the Eldorado Fortress but if we consider that this place is being manned by rough Pirates and not disciplined Soldiers then the differences make a lot of sense, it is meant to look a little delipadated. Overall though I feel that this set is just missing that little extra detail that made other sets great, the structure is not as exciting as Eldorado Fortress, which in turn make the set less engaging from a construction viewpoint, it just lacked that little something. Still though that is not to say the set is bad in any way it just had the potential to be more.

If you like this review click on the link to find it and all reviews of the pirate sets

http://legosteveblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/lego-pirates-wave-in-1989.html