Treasure Islands Christmas Boat Parade, 2017

One of our highlights of our time here, is to watch the annual Christmas boat parade. This year the Treasure Island Boat parade consisted of over forty boats! Our daughters friend Mike invited us over to his condo where we could view the parade from his fifth-floor condo balcony, and we got there in plenty of time to relax before the show.

It was a beautiful warm night with very light winds. A slight tide was flowing into John’s Pass. There are shallow islands in the pass and so the boats had to follow a narrow-defined channel to prevent them from running ashore.

The parade started at other end of the island and, so it took about an hour before the lead boat, rounded the bend. The lead boat is always a police boat and the flashing red lights cleared the way as boats full of watchers scurried to find a place to anchor.

The first few boats were somewhat small and, so it gave me some practice as I took some shots with our good camera. I thought I would try the thirty-five to seventy-five mm lens hoping that I would get better detail using the night setting.

Trying to take three images of each boat I managed to blur quite a few, but enough of the images worked out. The main problem I had was when boats used their spotlights as the bright white light made taking a stacked image almost impossible. The boats were moving as the camera took four images in a row before stacking them together.

Enough with the details, the boats arrived and passed below us. The people on board yelled Christmas greetings. Santa Clauses, reindeer, Christmas trees, menorahs, and lots and lots of icicles went by.

Several of the boats were business’s that had the name of their establishment displayed on the boats side.

There were boats of all sizes and some of them were quite crowded with party goers. To give you an idea of their size some had four outboard engines mounted on the back, and each one of the engines was over four hundred horse power!

We yelled and waved back at the parade boats and everyone had an enjoyable time. None of the boats collided and the boats stacked up at the end of the parade inside John’s Pass. The last boat passed by and the boats started to disperse.

Mikes place is an ideal spot to watch the parade and we thanked him for his kind invitation! It seemed like it was the biggest and best boat parade we have ever watched. We would also like to take this opportunity to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and of course Clear skies.