Boaters and sailors decorated their boats with vibrant lights and donned costumes for the third annual boat parade on Lagoon Pond on Saturday night to celebrate the pond and encourage its continued preservation.
Organized by the Lagoon Pond Association, the event — called “Light Up the Lagoon” — featured 15 boats, Island residents, and summer visitors, who came together to light up the night for one another and onlookers at the shore.
Each boat was wrapped with Christmas lights around its bow and stern. Some included blow-up, glow-in-the-dark inflatable floats. Flashes also flickered from the shore as onlookers waved flashlights as the boats passed by.
“We see it as another way to share our excitement about the pond with everybody — not only on the pond, but in the community,” parade organizer and treasurer of the Lagoon Pond Association Doug Reece said.
The celebration was initially started three summers ago when Sherry Countryman of the Lagoon Pond Association organized a mass lights-on night, where residents around Lagoon Pond would turn their lights on at the same time and wave flashlights and sparklers on the waterfront. Reece said that celebration morphed into the boat parade after its initial success. Two years ago, Reece was the only boat on the water, and he said people showed increasing interest afterward. Then the event took off.
“This year, I would say at least half the boats really stepped up their game, so to speak, with flashing lights and multiple lights,” Reece said. “We put our grandson’s blow-up water toy, which is a glow-in-the-dark dinosaur … so he was watching over the whole parade … It was really fun.”
This was also the first year a sailboat was involved — a 42-footer called Our Passion — and Reece said she was a sight to see. Costumes were a part of the night as well, most of them glow-in-the-dark, with one person wrapped in Christmas lights and another in a skeleton jumpsuit.
The boats sliced through the Lagoon Pond water, half from the drawbridge and half from the head of the pond, meeting each other in the middle.
“At about the halfway point, my parade met the other parade,” said Reece, “and we passed each other like ships in the night. Everybody was yelling and honking at each other. So that would be my favorite part of it.”