Rock and Roll Fantasy

A few boats from the boat parade...

The theme of the Huntington Harbor Boat Parade was "Rock and Roll Fantasy" (click on the images to enlarge)...

Musical notes.

They had an actual band playing on the bow.

Guitars and records.

The Beatles.

KISS.

Can't do rock & roll without someone impersonating Elvis.

Santa with a guitar.

I really should take video so you can hear all the music playing. And, of course, the people on board calling out to us, "the people on the bridge".

Almost Missed It

The last two times we went to the Huntington Harbor Boat Parade (2014, 2018), we got there 'round about 5 PM and waited until the boats arrived after 7 PM. So, this year, we were going to be clever and get there after 6 PM.

So, we'd gotten our chairs set up, and I had even taken a test picture...

...when we talked to a passerby. Who told us the boats had been there about an hour previous...

Seriously? The one year we don't go early...

A boat did come by...

But it was clear we had missed the festivities. Doh!

After a quick search online, a map was found of the parade route. The boats had been scheduled to get to our location at 5:15 PM. But...

This area has a lot of channels of water. It'd be best if you take a look at the map...

We were at location number 4. It's nearly at the top of the map. Right next to it is a strip of green. And next to that is location 31, which had the not yet reached time of 7:56 PM.

The strip of green is actually a bridge. The boats didn't go under the bridge but came back around to it. In previous years, they hit that side of the bridge first. But if the map was correct, we had over an hour to kill (just like in previous years).

So, we came later, and we still had to wait. Although, we weren't sure if we had missed it entirely. Since we were already there, we decided to wait.

As the time drew closer, a crowd had gathered on the bridge...

We joined them, and we waited. And waited. It was nearly 8:15 PM when we spied...

We hadn't missed it after all. Whew.

And somehow, I have managed to figure out how to work my phone camera so that I could get pretty decent images, unlike the prior two times. It turns out night photos take 3 seconds, but I could turn that off so the image just captures with no upload time. (I'm not sure what this is called.)

Not all the images came out, because moving boats, but after that first test boat (second picture in this post), more of them came out decently than not.

I'll save most of those pictures for tomorrow, although I posted a few of them yesterday. (So many photos came out I was able to make three posts out of them. Success.)

But I'll close this post with the last boat of the parade. They really went all out with this...

It was really, really tall. And impressive.

Christmas Boats

No one's actually around today, right? Right...

So, here are some boats from the Huntington Harbour Boat Parade this year, keeping in the spirit of the holiday. (Click on the images to enlarge them.)

My favorite boat every year. Just spectacular.

From this angle you can see the "wings" better.

Olaf and a few Christmas things.

It's not a SoCal Christmas without lit up palm trees.

A few Christmas friends.

This is like that house with all the blow up things on the front lawn.

I imagine this is what Santa's sleigh looks like at the end of the night.

Merry Christmas.

Decorated Boats

It's been a few years since we last saw the holiday boat parade. This time we went on a Saturday, but we got there early and waited a good two hours for the boats to get to us. Sigh.

We've sworn to remember for next time that the boats don't get to this little cove until about 7 PM. Maybe we even will. 

That previous time, I took loads of pictures, but few of them turned out. So, this time I thought I'd try video. And... It didn't go as well as I would have liked. I did get some good images. Kind of. But it's not great video.

None of the videos are very long. And you can hear us talking in the background. (Feel free to keep it on mute. If I knew how to add music, I'd do so.) Also, I have no idea if this will work, so here goes nothing...

I think this was my favorite boat of the night. It looks like it has wings. This video is about a minute, but let it go so you can watch the boat turn around and really get a good look at it...

And finally, a cute little one...

(I had a longer video with several boats, but it's too big a file to upload. If I could figure out YouTube, and that includes figuring out how to edit this a bit, I would make a much better video to share.)

It's a learning process, right?

Holiday Boat Parade

Not last Sunday, but the Sunday before that, they held the annual Huntington Harbor Boat Parade. (Well, it was held Saturday and Sunday, but I went Sunday night.)

I'd never been before, but I'd heard of it. Boat owners decorate their boats with lights and sail (motor?) around the harbor.

We set up in what we figured was plenty of time. We had our picnic and waited. And waited. In the frigid cold (57 degrees!). We were just about to give up (figuring we had the wrong night or they canceled the thing without notice) when the boats finally made it to where we waited.

(According to the map, they were supposed to get to our spot at about 5:30 PM. We saw them at closer to 7 PM.)

I took pictures. Most of them came out blurry. Sad face. (Well, it was nighttime--slower shutter speeds--and the boats were moving. Not a surprise, really.) But I can share a couple of them...

Our view without boats

Sadly, most of the pics came out much more blurry than this

This boat had lots and lots of wings

Party boat

Palm trees seemed to be a bit of a theme

I'm not going to tell you how many pics I took. Let's just say a lot. And these were the best of them.  

Still, it was a fun night, and it was great to see all the decorated boats.