(I forgot to include a link to read a little more about Junkanoo if you’re interested. Feel free to check this out if you’d like to hear more about this tradition.)
Happy New Year!
Sabrina and I took the dinghy around to Settlement Creek on New Plymouth yesterday afternoon for the local festivities. The amount of people compared to Friday was astounding, check out the two photos of the “Jail” below to see what I’m talking about.
We were able to raft off the dinghy at the public dock and head ashore. The parade was definitely running on “Island Time,” it was advertised to start at 2:00 and finally kicked off a little before 4:00. My theory was that this kept all the visitors milling about town and going to the numerous conch stands and bars. There was a stand on the public dock operated by a man and a woman with another guy cleaning fresh conch in the water nearby. The gentleman at the stand painstakingly made conch salad fresh about 10 servings at a time. You had to get a ticket and wait in line for over an hour to get one of the salads, but everyone said it was worth it. I didn’t have the will to wait so I purchased the conch fritters which were delicious.
The Junkanoo parade was wonderful and I couldn’t believe the size of some of the “floats” that the dancers wore in the heat. The drummers tirelessly beat on makeshift toms or 55 gallon drums with their bare hands. The locals followed the parade, dancing along to the beat and waving hello to all their friends.
We made it back from New Plymouth before dark, I cooked a nice dinner and we headed to the bar for a drink around 10:00. The island was pretty quiet and we ended up ringing the New Year in back on the boat.
Sabrina and I are starting our New Year’s Resolutions today- our most important one is to pare down our possessions and clean out the boat! We’re using GTC to finish up some things on the internet that we didn’t have time to do before we left, and we can’t wait to anchor out in some peace and quiet at Manjack Cay in the next couple days.
Hope you all had a safe and Happy New Year!
Happy Junkanoo! Enjoy Paradise!
Thanks, can’t wait till we can meet up with you guys. (And paradise has a wicked cross breeze today!)
AFC north sends 3 teams to the playoffs.
Glad to hear the Browns turned it around! Right?
Hey guys,
Just wanted to say hi and thanks for all the updates. I am really enjoying reading them and seeing the pics. Living vicariously through blogs like these until someday I can do the same thing. Enjoy every moment and keep posting when you can!
Brandon aka Capt’n B – Currently gunk-holing the upper Chesapeake Bay as many weekends as I can 🙂
Thanks for following along, we’ll be back to gunk-holing when we come north in the spring, we never had enough time when we were working to get to all the cool places on the Bay. Maybe we’ll see you around?
I hope so!
Shannon Bullard is the one that turned me on to your blog. Been hanging out in the Upper Bay (NE River) for the last few years. Bringing a new-to-me cruiser boat to HdG this spring so the gunk-holing opportunity’s should increase dramatically!
Enjoy your time down South and fair winds to you!
Brandon