12.12- Spirit of Christmas Boat Parade

A sailboat decorated with lighted forestay and backstay follows a lighted power boat in the Spirit of Christmas nighttime Boat Parade

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After sunset today, a fleet of lighted and decorated boats paraded from Whittaker Creek to Oriental Marker No. 3 and back, as spectators watched from Lou-Mac Park and the South Avenue waterfront.

It was a bit difficult to capture the boats on camera as they passed about a half-mile away out in the Neuse River, but I like how the above time exposure shot shows the motion of the boat in the squiggly trails left by each of its many lights (check out the full size version to see the squigglies) They remind me of a seismograph output, or the medical monitors on the hibernation pods in "2001 Space Odyssey."

Below is some of the fleet assembling at the mouth of Whittaker Creek:

Here is an overall picture of the parading fleet:

One boat was decorated as Santa Claus' sled, complete with eight flying reindeer, (four attached to each side her bowsprit), and a giant Santa in the cockpit:

After the parade, folks assembled on Hodges Street at the Town dock for some caroling (complete with organ accompaniment from the Pamlico Presbyterian Church) and the lighting of this year's Spirit of Christmas Star on the Town dock flagmast (you can see the un-lit star hanging on what looks like a telephone pole on the right-hand side of the photo below, followed by a close-up of the lighted star):

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An itinerant dog took in the sights from the deck of a decorated catamaran docked at Oriental Harbor Marina & Inn :

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