egaito
Legendary Member
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2005
- Messages
- 1,153
- Status
- OWNER - I own a Hatteras Yacht
- Hatteras Model
- 41' CONVERTBLE-Series I (1964 - 1971)
I managed operations for a local boat parade this year. It didn't rival the coastal events some of you are familiar with, but with 40-45 boats, we did pretty good for inland folks. This has traditionally been a yacht club event, but the last two years we've started opening it up to the rest of the lake, this year publicizing it, getting sponsors, and setting up the event to benefit Toys for Tots.
I'm a bit of a safety nut on the water, and did a lot of planning and research to make the event as predictable and safe as possible. I did some studying of other events, recruited some CG Auxiliary guys, Power Squadron folks, and TowBoat US to help me out. We had a great event that shows promise of growing significantly in coming years. I wouldn't be surprised if we made it to 60 or 70 boats next year if the weather cooperates.
I noticed some challenges unique to our environment vs. the coast I thought might interest the group. For example, on our lake, there are markers, but they mark river and creek boundaries, and are placed on land. You can go from over 100ft of water to 0 in less than 50 yards. With the lake almost 10 feet low, we had to mark unfamiliar obstacles with boats and temporary markers.
We also had to lay out a course, as there are no marked channels. I dropped sailing marks the night before with lights on them, and set them so there were lit, land-based, bearing marks folks could look for as well, and then had the Power Squadron boats take up station at them for the parade, turning on yellow rotating (strobes were used for obstacles) beacons to represent the turn points. The marks gave them something to loiter near as several were in over 100 feet of water (too much to anchor in from a small boat) I thought the marks worked great until I heard a conversation on the ops channel....Boat 1, "Hey, what do you see between me and you" Boat B: "uuhhh, TREES!". Yep, someone had lifted and moved one of my marks...there's one in every crowd I guess. Easy enough, the mark boat turned off the light on the mark, and moved his boat back out into the original position.
Another issue I had to deal with was boat speed. In addition to power and sail, we have a good number of houseboats. If the wind is blowing, they need some speed to maintain steerage. Picture a 100' long by 15-20' foot tall shoe box in the wind, with small blocks, outdrives, and typically very inexperienced captains trying to keep it in control! I split the boats into fleets, and put a pace boat between the houseboats and cruisers, and then the cruisers and sailboats. This way, if the wind kicked up, I could speed up the head of the parade without forcing the sailers to let all of the smoke out of their little diesels (and outboards!) trying to keep up.
We also setup "spectator zones" along the course, and made several VHF annoucements letting people know where the best, and safest places to watch were. We had TowBoat run off a few people that thought the best place to watch was between two marks, and one that wanted to get good pictures by runing in and out of the fleet! I'm really glad I did this, as a TON of spectator boats turned out, and most of them were actually in the right places.
We required registration for the event, and I held a mandatory skippers meeting, keeping the course to myself until then to draw people, and give me the opportunity to shorten it for weather, time, or whatever. This gave me the opportunity to talk to people that might not have done something like this before about how night vision is affected, where the obstacles were, and what the emergency procedures would be if something went wrong (fire, man over-board, etc).
The website for the event (be kind, I ended up establishing the domain, and putting it up in a few hours at the last minute) is http://www.lanierparadeoflights.org The photo gallery is growing as folks come back from the holidays. Yes, that's Misty in the background.
So beyond just sharing, I'm looking for input. It was a blast for me, and everything went fine, but we've already identified improvements for next year. Since it appears that I've (been) volunteered to run this event again next year, I would love to hear how other parades have been run to learn from the experience of others running or participating in such an event.
Heck, if nothing else, tell us about the boat parades you have been to, by land or on sea!
Thanks,
I'm a bit of a safety nut on the water, and did a lot of planning and research to make the event as predictable and safe as possible. I did some studying of other events, recruited some CG Auxiliary guys, Power Squadron folks, and TowBoat US to help me out. We had a great event that shows promise of growing significantly in coming years. I wouldn't be surprised if we made it to 60 or 70 boats next year if the weather cooperates.
I noticed some challenges unique to our environment vs. the coast I thought might interest the group. For example, on our lake, there are markers, but they mark river and creek boundaries, and are placed on land. You can go from over 100ft of water to 0 in less than 50 yards. With the lake almost 10 feet low, we had to mark unfamiliar obstacles with boats and temporary markers.
We also had to lay out a course, as there are no marked channels. I dropped sailing marks the night before with lights on them, and set them so there were lit, land-based, bearing marks folks could look for as well, and then had the Power Squadron boats take up station at them for the parade, turning on yellow rotating (strobes were used for obstacles) beacons to represent the turn points. The marks gave them something to loiter near as several were in over 100 feet of water (too much to anchor in from a small boat) I thought the marks worked great until I heard a conversation on the ops channel....Boat 1, "Hey, what do you see between me and you" Boat B: "uuhhh, TREES!". Yep, someone had lifted and moved one of my marks...there's one in every crowd I guess. Easy enough, the mark boat turned off the light on the mark, and moved his boat back out into the original position.
Another issue I had to deal with was boat speed. In addition to power and sail, we have a good number of houseboats. If the wind is blowing, they need some speed to maintain steerage. Picture a 100' long by 15-20' foot tall shoe box in the wind, with small blocks, outdrives, and typically very inexperienced captains trying to keep it in control! I split the boats into fleets, and put a pace boat between the houseboats and cruisers, and then the cruisers and sailboats. This way, if the wind kicked up, I could speed up the head of the parade without forcing the sailers to let all of the smoke out of their little diesels (and outboards!) trying to keep up.
We also setup "spectator zones" along the course, and made several VHF annoucements letting people know where the best, and safest places to watch were. We had TowBoat run off a few people that thought the best place to watch was between two marks, and one that wanted to get good pictures by runing in and out of the fleet! I'm really glad I did this, as a TON of spectator boats turned out, and most of them were actually in the right places.
We required registration for the event, and I held a mandatory skippers meeting, keeping the course to myself until then to draw people, and give me the opportunity to shorten it for weather, time, or whatever. This gave me the opportunity to talk to people that might not have done something like this before about how night vision is affected, where the obstacles were, and what the emergency procedures would be if something went wrong (fire, man over-board, etc).
The website for the event (be kind, I ended up establishing the domain, and putting it up in a few hours at the last minute) is http://www.lanierparadeoflights.org The photo gallery is growing as folks come back from the holidays. Yes, that's Misty in the background.
So beyond just sharing, I'm looking for input. It was a blast for me, and everything went fine, but we've already identified improvements for next year. Since it appears that I've (been) volunteered to run this event again next year, I would love to hear how other parades have been run to learn from the experience of others running or participating in such an event.
Heck, if nothing else, tell us about the boat parades you have been to, by land or on sea!
Thanks,
