STAMFORD ADVOCATE
A boatload of lights
Holiday parade sparkles in debut
By Doug Dalena
Staff Writer, The Advocate
STAMFORD -Last night’s holiday boat parade – Stamford’s first – didn’t have the marching bands and the massive flying balloons of downtown’s more well-known spectacle, but it certainly had something for everyone.
There was the working lighthouse on a boat named for a castle, Santa Claus dancing with a couple of mini-skirted elves on a cabin cruiser, and a thrown-together band playing “Run Run Rudolph” on the stern of another boat while a couple two-stepped on the forecastle.
The parade of lights was the brainchild of Andy Liljequist and Dick Gildersleeve, neighbors in the Stamford Landing condominiums, Waterside businessmen and boaters. Liljequist manages the Avalon building on the harbor; Gildersleeve is a partner in the Crab Shell restaurant, where the parade ended last night.
On the way from Czescik Marina to the west branch of the harbor, 31 vessels teeming with lights, revelers and good cheer passed impromptu cocktail parties on boats, in waterfront condominiums and on patches of high ground.
After rounding the southern tip of Kosciuszko Park, each boat paraded past the public pier that extends from the Avalon complex to the edge of the navigation channel. From the pier, nearly 200 onlookers cheered each floating decoration, from the live Christmas tree on the bow of one boat to the neck-bobbing reindeer on another.
Parents held children aloft to see over the rails while couples cuddled on a chilly, becalmed evening.
Later, as the grog and hot chocolate flowed at the Crab Shell, parade goers mingled with boat owners on the boardwalk.
Awards were given in four categories. The most outrageous vessel was the yet-to-be-named-or-sold sloop loaned by Waterside’s own Sailing Specialties to Windcheck, a Bridgeport sailing publication, for its frequent firing of a racing start cannon throughout the parade.
Most original went to Constant Dilemma, the boat with the band and dancers.
“Forty minutes I played ‘Run Run Rudolph,’ ” said vessel owner and guitarist Bill Frenz. “I don’t want to hear that again till next year.”
There was a tie for best decorated, between Mike’s Castle, owned by Mike Donofrio, which carried the lighthouse made of lights, and Season’s Reason, the one-night name of the C&C ‘35 normally called Heart’s Desire, owned by Allen Lovejoy of Old Greenwich.
“I put my art major to good use,” said Lovejoy’s daughter, Avery, a senior at Washington and Lee University.
Organizers even made up an extra award, most courageous, to recognize the Kevin Blagys, the kayaker who decorated his boat and his paddle with Christmas lights and propelled himself along the entire parade route.
Maureen Boylan, the evening’s emcee, said Blagys deserved something for having the guts “to put a car battery in a kayak and light the whole damn thing up.”
His courage didn’t end there. He had to paddle back.
©2006 Southern CT Newspapers, Inc.
Parade News | admin | 
November 26, 2006 4:03 pm
Subscribe
