Boat parade

Saturday night was the bi-annual Bermuda Boat Parade and we made our way down Harbour Road with the intent to get into town and watch from my office balcony but a road accident put pay to that and we instead watched the 70 or so lit boats sail by at Darrell’s Wharf in Paget.

The Boat Parade is a festive highlight here and many of the boats were decked from stern to bow in colourful lights, banners and figures accompanied by partiers and at least 50 different Santa’s that I counted. My favourite being Neptune, the god of the sea (photo) with Star Wars being the most decorative and noisy and Santa’s ride complete with roaring exhaust fames being the most outrageous.

Almost 20,000 people, which is roughly a third of the island’s population were said to witness the event and we were rewarded with a beautiful clear evening. The boats lit like Christmas trees ranged from multi-million dollar yachts to simple Boston whalers and they cut through the flat water like a knife.

The boats paraded around White’s Island in the Harbour for a couple of hours and the evening ended with a rare Bermudian firework display. Fireworks are illegal here and there are few professional displays, unlike in Chicago when they occurred almost nightly.

Full set of photos courtesy of Bernews.com.