With Luck, Holiday Events Will Be a Breeze This Time

After storms wreaked havoc on Ventura County holiday events last week, participants and organizers of this weekend’s parades are hoping lightning doesn’t strike twice, so to speak.

The more than 100 entries in Camarillo’s parade, which was disrupted last year by high winds, are expected to roll beginning at noon Saturday from the intersection of Las Posas Road and Temple Avenue.

And although the possibility of a deluge that forced organizers of Oxnard’s downtown parade to postpone last Saturday’s event until noon Sunday isn’t expected to be a factor, winds are a concern.

“I’m worried about the wind, because the wind is blowing up a storm right now,” parade organizer Carol Lavender said Thursday afternoon. “Hopefully it will die down by Sunday morning . . . . I am the eternal optimist. I believe we had a bad weekend, so we’re due for a good one.”

Indeed, winds are expected to diminish Saturday under sunny skies.

Optimism is also in the air among organizers and spectators of the annual waterborne Parade of Lights at Oxnard’s Channel Islands Harbor that will be held both Friday and Saturday nights for the first time ever--weather permitting.

High winds forced its cancellation for the first time in 31 years last year, and this year’s event is scheduled in the wake of last weekend’s Ventura version that never left the dock because of the storm.

This year’s event is being held on successive days in an effort to attract more exposure to the struggling county-owned harbor. As many as 50,000 people have attended the parade in past years, said organizer Susan O’Brien.

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“Traditionally the restaurants sell out well in advance and the traffic is really bad, so we’re trying to spread it out,” she said. “This may be our best year ever. . . . All those poor people that missed [Ventura’s parade] last weekend, we’re expecting them to come too.”

Those who will set sail at 7 o’clock each evening on the 35 to 40 vessels expected to take part are also hoping the weather is an improvement over 1996.

Last year, the Harbor Patrol ordered Lou Jacobs’ 32-foot pleasure boat “Surfer Girl” back to port when the parade was aborted at the last minute.

The high winds and stormy seas caused problems for the craft, outfitted with more than 3,200 lights, when high winds whipped an illuminated 11-foot sign at Santa Claus.

“We almost lost Santa--all 200 pounds of him,” recalled Jacobs’ neighbor and crew member, Bill Kahn.

This year the Mandalay Bay residents have been a little more conservative, adding only three strands of colored lights to the boat’s hull and placing on deck impressive life-size figures of the Swamp Thing and Frankenstein’s Monster that were borrowed from a movie production company. A smaller bug-eyed alien also clings to the side of the boat.

The parade’s theme is “Hollywood by the Sea II,” a holdover from last year’s storm-tossed event.

Charter boat owner Rick Craddick hopes the parade’s theme is the only repeat. Last year, he was forced to refund the $10 a head that 49 spectators paid for ringside parade seats on his 56-foot vessel.

This time he has rented his craft to parade sponsor GTE americast.

The cable television company has an elaborate 4,000-plus light display planned, along with a 13-foot-wide plywood Santa and several other eye-catching, and wind-catching, figures.

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“We’re praying the wind’s not going to blow,” Craddick said Thursday as he watched several burly employees of the company struggle to erect a tall mast on the deck buffeted by wind gusts of up to 40 mph.

“I’ll just have them leave the mast up afterward. I’ll put a sail on it and save on diesel fuel.”