Sail Plymouth – 2009

This weekend, our town held a 3 day event called the SAIL Plymouth 2009 Festival.

The festival was kicked off with the Welcome Sail of the Amistad & Peacemaker ships into Plymouth Harbor, on Thursday night, to their docking location by Plymouth’s Mayflower II.  To learn more about the history of these ships, you can click here.

On Friday night, in honor of our visiting ships, they had a Parade of Boats!  It sounded like a fun and exciting event, and we thought the kids would really, really enjoy it.  So we joined the crowds of people along the Plymouth Waterfront, to watch.  I’m not the best night-time photographer yet, but I dentid my best to capture the beauty of these decorated boats, for the event.

The kids were SO excited.  It really was a perfect and beautiful night for the event.  The kind of summer nights we just eat up!

 Here’s a good handful of some of the boats in the parade.  The boat owners were to do their best to make their boats look the most festive, by using lights, music or other noise makers, etc.  They were judged by 3 judges, one of whom was Peter Arenstam, author of  ‘Nicholas – A Massachusetts Tale‘, among other titles.  (Nicholas is the first chapter book our 6 year old triplets read, this year, and I very much enjoyed it myself, as I’ve blogged about!  Peter, we learned, is a resident here. )

I really loved this one.

The paddle wheel boat was pretty cool looking too.

Uncle Sam aboard here, cracked us up.  But I did think the American flags, waving off the back, was a very nice touch.

Once some boats reaches the end of the route, they looped back.  So soon we had boats passing by each other.

It was a really nice crowd of people down there, and we really enjoyed ourselves.  When we got home, the kids watched a great display of firework, right from the school room window, as they do every 3rd night of July.  The 3rd of July gets pretty crazy around here.  Not on our road, but there are bonfires, fireworks and parties for miles along the beach shores.   It’s an annual tradition.  Although we do have deeded beach rights to a private beach that we enjoy quite a bit year round, and the beach is within walking distance, this particular night it is just too crazy down there to be a safe or nurturing environment for the kids.   But they were quite happy with the boat parade, and the fireworks they see this night is a just a neighbor somewhere back there, who sets them off every year.  The view is perfect from our school room windows, so the kids pull up a bench and enjoy the show!  Then, it is bedtime, and a very late bedtime for them.

We had a full weekend ahead already, but the SAIL Plymouth Festival continued through the weekend, with a carnival, blessing of the fleets, fireworks (the latter 2 being annual events), and a Farewell to our visiting ships!  It was a summer night to remember, that kicked off a weekend of celebrating for us!

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