After quite a few years of discussing it, I was finally able to get down to Charleston and do the Holiday Parade of Boats, put on by the America's Boating Club in Charleston.Bob had done it before, but it is a lot of work for the boats involved, and he needed a crew to help do it right.
Friday was a bit worrisome but the the rain was coming down in buckets, but Saturday came with clear skies. Bob had done quite a bit of prep work in advance on the turtles, and making sure all the lights worked. So we were able to just load the car and head to the boat and get her decorated. The wind was up during the day, and we had to wrestle with the decorations a bit. But the doves and the turtles were successfully mounted. The LED's were difficult to see in broad daylight, soto when we ran our initial test, it was difficult to see if all lights were functioning. After much squinting, shading , and deliberation, we were able to determine that the green lights for the turtle carapaces were not lighting. But we were able to resolve the faulty connection without too much angst.
We fell short on making a string of blue lights look like waves though, and had to return to the house to get Ronda (who seems to have all the artistic talent) to bail us out. While Ronda made waves for the turtles to swim it, finale preparations were made to get under way and on station for the parade. We were also joined by Bob's nephew Conor and his wife Emily around this time.
We cast of and got on station in a timely fashion. Finding our place in line was a bit tricky, because all the parade numbers were mounted on the starboard side of the parade boats, but to get on station the incoming boats were seeing the port side of the boats inline. But after hollering "WHAT"S YOUR NUMBER" over to other boats once or twice, we found our spot and slid in to formation.
Once the parade command gave the call over the radio to fire up our our decorations and begin the parade, it was all very exciting. Bob and I traded off the helm multiple times. Manning the helm on this run was a challenge for multiple reasons. For starters, boats were not moving a inconsistent speeds due to the issue of having all types of boats in the parade. Additionally, being surrounded by bright lights and looking at other brightly lit boats made it difficult to see objects in the dark in between all these boats. There were spectator boats that were anchored precariously close to the parade route, as well as unlit nav markers and other hazards. To top it all off, there were other boats not associated with the parade sliding into the line, and some boats cutting across the parade route! But we kept our eyes sharp, and kept ourselves safe. There was a brief moment when we thought we had fouled the prop on something, but it turned out we were all clear, and we were able to finish and get back to the dock.
To bring this post to a successful conclusion, we attended the awards on Sunday, and the Black Dog was voted First Place in the Sailboat category!! Now we need to up our game for next time!
SAVE THE TURTLES!
