Bridgewater Channel Shimmers With Boat Parade Of Lights

By Becky Maxedon

Crowds lined the Bridgewater Channel in Lake Havsu City Saturday night when holiday magic floated by.

The annual Boat Parade of Lights illuminted the channel, bringing the spirit of Christmas with each decorated boat.

One parade entry crew told RiverScene Magazine the story of how they came to participate in the event.

One of the crowd pleasers in the parade was “Little Crabby” – a pirate ship.

Logan Lefebre brought the pirate ship that was built on Andres Island in the Caribbean to participate in the event.

“It’s 98 percent garbage retrieved from the bottom of the ocean by free diving. We saw this event when we lived in the Carribbean and we recently moved here and decided to enter it. It’s a good-will boat. Never a fee or anything like that.  All our cannons fire, our slingshots fire and there’s lots of smoke for the kids,” Lefebre said.

At the helm is Lefebre’s wife Barbara Cline. “Capt. Calico I call her. She’s a freckled and a redhead and she’s the captain of the ship.”

“I had been to Havasu about 35 years ago. I was living in Phoenix. I didn’t know anything about Havasu so a friend of mine brought me up here. He said ‘you won’t beleive this place.’ I didn’t know there was a lake here,” he said.

The couple drove up to the area one winter during the Havasu Balloon Festival and Faire. “We loved this place and decided that when we retired we would move here,” he said.

While still in the Caribbean, they watched the Boat Parade of Lights on RiverScene Magazine’s site.

“I didn’t know they had a boat parade and I decided we had to be in it. We built it, we saliled it, we barged it and we trailered it across the hottest desert known to mankind just to get it here to be in this event.”

It’s the vessel’s first year being in the Boat Parade.

Winning entrants in the parade were announced Sunday morning.

Best First-Time Entry $250 – #23 Benjamin Gerlich

Judges Wildcard Pick $500 – #16 Kelsy and Tesia Hansen (The Van Boat Airplane)

Best Nonprofit $500 – #18 The Parrott Head Club

Best Corporate Entry $500 – #8 Anderson Auto and Powersports Group

Best Family Entry $500 – #1 The Creagan Family

Best of Show (and the first ever three-time winner) $1,500 – #4 (Gingerbread House) The Luebke Family

People’s Choice $500 – #4 The Luebke Family

Lake Havasu Boat Parade of Lights title sponsors were Anderson Auto and Powersports and GoLakeHavasu.

Event organizers were JJ Gibbs and his assistant Rachael Atkinson.

Here are photos from the event and the awards breakfast.