Christmas Afloat : All Along Southern California Shores, Colorful Boat Parades Light Up the Yule Sky

As darkness descends over the boat slips, the ship captains anxiously await a signal from Cmdr. Geoffrey DeSio on the marine radio.

At the appointed moment, DeSio’s command suddenly crackles over the airwaves: “Lights on!” Simultaneously, fireworks rocket into the night and thousands of Christmas bulbs strung between 100 bows and sterns flash on, reflecting a line of boats in the water and delighting spectators on shore.

The Marina del Rey Christmas Boat Parade, and the holiday season, are off and sailing.

Led by film and television director Bruce Kessler at the helm of his 70-foot yacht, Zopilote, the parade splashes off tonight at 5:30 with the grand marshal, actress Cloris Leachman, and her family aboard Kessler’s ship.

All Along the Coast

The Marina del Rey parade, organized by the Pioneer Skippers Boat Owners’ Assn., is just one of a flotilla of boat parades planned between now and Christmas in communities from Morro Bay to San Diego.

Some parades boast as many as 200 boat entries, others as few as 30, but the boat owners who devise the original and humorous Christmas decorations and the landlubbers who come to see the light extravaganzas all look forward to what has become a traditional and characteristically Southern Californian Christmas outing.

“The decorations usually are a combination of lights and painted backdrops with spotlighted scenes,” says Willie Hjorth, parade executive adviser at the helm for the 22nd consecutive year.

“The Christmas lights are the big eye-dazzler kind,” she says. “The boat owners really get motivated and create scenes with plywood, luminescent paint, even foam.”

The results are enhanced by twinkling lights, sleighs in the snow, celebrity guests in front of Christmas trees, costumed Santas coming down the masts, gifts at the hearth and cavorting two-legged reindeer.

Kessler’s Zopilote (“a trawler, a tuna boat,” he calls it, but it is ingeniously modified to please people rather than fish) sports a set of traditional decorations that Hjorth says are stored every year and pulled out for the boat that ferries the grand marshal. “We’ll have strings of lights and some 11-foot dolphins and oversize stars out there,” she says. “They’re sawed out of wood.”

The USC and UCLA bands, playing on separate boats, compete, as always, to see who’s best--or loudest. On other boats, mercifully spaced far apart, Christmas carols and pop tunes blurt from woofers and tweeters powered by marine generators.

Although the activity at the Marina del Rey parade may appear chaotic, there are both theme and purpose propelling it. “Christmas Dreams” is this year’s decorating theme.

Its purpose--besides fun for the boat owners and onlookers--is to raise money for Free Arts for Abused Children, a Malibu-based charity. The money earned comes from boat-entry fees, donations, pre-parade fund raisers and souvenir-program ads. The parade itself is free to spectators.

The oldest of the parades is Newport Beach’s Christmas Boat Parade of Lights. Celebrating a venerable 80th anniversary, the Newport parade sails at 6:30 p.m. every night for seven days, starting next Saturday. As in previous years, Orange County builder William Lusk will be the grand marshal.

Seven Evenings of Parades

Two hundred elaborately decorated boats are expected to participate, a far cry from the first years of the parade, when Newport Beach was an isolated colony of summer cottages.

Entry judging continues all week, and the winners are announced at an awards ceremony in January.

The Newport parade route, moving counterclockwise, starts at Collins Island, passes Harbor Island, Linda Isle, Bay Shores, Lido Isle, Balboa Peninsula and Pirate’s Cove and returns to the starting point.

Newport Beach is erecting grandstands for those who don’t want to brave the chill and crowds at the water’s edge. The grandstands are set up at the Sea Scout Base on Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach.

The Newport event has served as a model for most of the other parades. In fact, according to Hjorth, Marina del Rey’s parade began when some boat owners from Newport Beach moved their crafts to the newly opened marina in 1963 and missed the old Christmas tradition of lights on the water.

“In the early days, the (Marina) parade was very informal,” Hjorth says, “but, as the marina started to grow, that’s when I got involved in trying to organize the parade.

“The boat owners are very safety-conscious, but they were not used to handling their boats in the dark . . . and the Christmas lights shine in your eyes. Even with 35 or 36 boats we had chaos, and boats bumping into each other.”

A Family Event

At the time, Hjorth and her husband, John, were living on their catamaran in the marina and raising two children, and Hjorth was looking for a family boating event.

“In a race,” she says, “with your crew of heavy-duty men cranking on the winches, that’s no place for little kids. But the boat parade was something I thought everybody could get involved in.”

Until you’ve seen them, you might wonder just how creatively boats can be decorated, what with decks clogged with masts, ropes, chains, a windshield (if it’s a power boat), and assorted nautical hardware underfoot.

Another limitation is imposed by the parade route: The boats travel in a circle, so that only the right (starboard) side faces the crowd. Over the years, however, ingenious solutions evolved to surmount these problems, mostly by decorations on a superstructure built over the hull.

“The parades have gotten a lot more ambitious,” agrees longtime Marina del Rey parade judge David Asper Johnson. “The entries are really quite impressive now.”

Originality the Key

Johnson, publisher of the Argonaut, will look primarily for originality and imagination when he rates this year’s entries, but he concedes that there are other issues, such as trends in decorating.

Among his past favorites was a budget float, entered by the Department of Beaches and Harbors, which appeared to be a Loch Ness-style dragon. “They had gotten a string of little boats tied together as if a dragon were going through the water,” he recalls.

And then there was the Outrigger Canoe Club, members of which dressed like miniature reindeer and paddled around and around the course.

A more important change that Johnson sees is in the quality of the judging, more scientific now that a computer compiles the ratings submitted by the eight volunteer judges and chooses winners in the various award categories.

Entries More Elaborate

“In the early days, we winged it,” Johnson says, but with more boats and more elaborate entries, “each judge evaluates just one or two aspects of the parade, such as lights or theme.”

One of the boats not likely to win a prize for originality but sure to attract attention is attorney David Baker’s “fast” powerboat, the 38-foot Avenger, which he likens to Don Johnson’s “Miami Vice” speedboat.

However, the Avenger will stick to the regulation 4 m.p.h. speed limit, because Baker and his co-parade entrant, Bob Jacobs, will have 12 of the L.A. Raiderettes on board, smiling, waving and shaking their silver-and-black Raiders’ pompons.

Also on hand to add glamour to the other yachts will be some of the actors and actresses who donate time to “Free Art for Abused Children:” Monica Hyland of “General Hospital,” James Crittenten of “Paradise,” Lee Benton of “Mike Hammer” and John Considine of “Another World.”

Continuous Loop

In Marina del Rey, the parade route offers plenty of viewing spots; the boats sail in a continuous loop up and down the main channel, from the end near Admiralty Way, past the boat basins and out to the stake boat positioned halfway between Pacific Avenue and Via Marina. The parade ends at 7:30 p.m.

Though boat parades flourish because the participants themselves seem to have so much fun, a parade without a crowd to watch it is pretty dull stuff. Despite the cold air off the ocean, thousands of spectators show up each year.

They stand on the docks, hang over the railings and crowd into any spot with a good view of the boats. A few who plan ahead can reserve window tables in waterfront restaurants, for a dinner with a parade view.

If Marina del Rey, just north of Los Angeles International Airport, is not your neighborhood, another boat parade, in a closer harbor, awaits. But, whether by land or sea, all who are part of the parade agree that it’s a fine way to start the holiday season.