Annual Naples Christmas Parade

Leon was of course, the design brain behind this year's Naples Christmas Parade. Unfortunately, we do not have many photos from this event because the parade is done at night and none of us had cameras we felt comfortable getting wet on the boat.

These parades were very time consuming to setup with the mornings typically scrambling for materials, and the afternoons constructing the parade boat. The parade itself is hard to describe as the inky blackness of night is punctuated with amazing light shows as each boat attempts to out-shine the next.

We were lucky this year. We kept the design simple. Our website in simple cutout letters down the center of the boat with each of the paddlers as reindeer and a grinch santa as our steersman.

The parade circuits through the canals in the interior of naple's island. And oddly enough, the hardest part about the parade was going that slow. When we paddled, we would have entire streets cheering us on. But, the parade moves at such a slow pace, we would amp ourselves up in 5 strokes and have to check the boat hard to stop ourselves from crashing into the boat in front of us. Our "santa" even had a sack of candy that he threw to the bystanders along the canals.

Kenny (2010)