[CTdave]

I was thinking about all of my weekend fun & am wondering what everyone else did in the good old USA.

My weekend:

Thursday night: Drove with my wife & son (by car) to the local High School fireworks.
Friday night: Stamford CT fireworks by boat. We had a 6 boat raft up & front row seats!
Saturday night: Norwalk fireworks. Again, a fun raft up & a good position.

SUNDAY: The BIG one....
A guy by the name of Dolan (owns Cablevision, the NY Nicks, Madison Sq. Garden etc...) has a MAJOR party at his house in Oyster Bay.
Aside of having 2-3000 of his closest friends for an afternoon of fun, he puts on a fireworks show that in many peoples opinion, is bigger & better than the Macys NYC display.
He actually had people going around in a 30' twin engine RIB, handing out CD's, to the thousands of boats eagerly awaiting the show. Inside the package was instructions of EXACTLY when to start the CD. There was a countdown announced on VHF channel 5 & 9.
After the Star Spangled Banner, the show kicked off with "rock around the clock" perfectly in time with the fireworks. There were songs from the beach Boys & Ray Charles. Little pink houses by John Cougar, Uncle Sam by the Grateful Dead, America from Simon & Garfunkel just to name a few.
The show went on for almost 40 minutes but it was NON STOP. There were brilliant explosions with every single beat of the music! Literally, picture hearing Rock Around The Clock & seeing and explosion with every beat.
Everything was orderly. The police were everywhere but even after the show was over, everyone was calm & nobody went speeding out of the area.
There were many mega yachts but aside of "Parlay" & "Big Pond" (two locals) I failed to get the names

If your ever in New England on the 4th, this is the one you should never miss!
I hope someone else from the board was there!!

Dave

[YachtForums]

That sounds pretty hard to beat!

My 4th of July was a comedy of epic error and just about became headlines of the local newspaper. I had 3 parties to attend, but the first one just about became the last...

Let me draw a visual... 300 people packed into a backyard with a live band. The backyard has a pool with barstools built in to the bottom of the pool. There are two tiki-huts in the backyard where alcohol flowed freely. In addition, there are three slide-swing tables with thatched roofs. The backyard is set-up for parties, period. They even have "misters" all around the perimeter fence and roof facia of the house to keep guests cool.

Everyone's having a good time and waiting for the best "single family home" fireworks this side of Baghdad to begin. Because the backyard is jammed with people, the fireworks containers (barrels) are placed on the roof of the house. Seemed like a good idea at the time to the idiot in charge of lighting the fuse....

The fireworks barrels are about 24" in diameter and contain about 18 to 24 mortors. There are 4 barrels, each one ignites after the other in sequence, as the guy had the fuses tied together. I'm going to say two words and you can pretty much conclude how this scenario ended.... SLOPED ROOF!

As each mortor goes off, the barrels shift a little, in favor of gravity, which ultimately leads to the edge of the roof. By the time the last barrel lights, they all come tumbling down. 300 people are now targeted randomly by piro-technics gone wild.

Now we have people scattering like roaches with the lights turned on, sprinting like Olympic athletes on steroids and making dives for the pool that could win gold medals. Unfortunately, a couple of people were unaware of the built-in bar stools and ended up seriously hurt. One tiki huts catches on fire from a mortor. I grabbed an ice bucket, dipped it in the pool and put out the blaze before it found the alcohol.

Two girls were hit by enemy fire, but they were not hurt. One guy went to the hospital from debris in his eyes. Party was pretty much over after that. What's a shame... a bunch of girls now look like they've been in a wet T-shirt contest and I was too busy to look!

A fourth of July to remember... and forget.

[Candelita]

Wow, you both had very exciting weekends! I went to a BBQ but it was a "snooze fest" compared to the previous posts!

[YachtForums]

Hi Candelita,

Come on down to South Florida. We do this every weekend.

[Candelita]

Thanks, I will!

[John B]

4th of July was pretty cool but not quite as exciting as you guys!

Saw some fireworks Sat. night in Port Jeff Harbor. Sun AM headed up to Cape Cod for a couple days. Alot of serious (non-professional) fireworks on the beach at Sagamore. We were at anchor for a couple nights and headed home Tue stopping at Watch Hill for the night and a good portion of Wed, before heading back to Stamford.

We did pass this bucket of bolts anchored out of Newport on the 4th heading up to the Cape. I don't know why it was there - watch the fireworks? or dead in the water? Was a strange sight as we got closer. It is Huuuuuuge...

[John B]

Can you make out the name on the side?

[John B]

Well the photo isn't sharp nough to see the name - it's the Queen Mary

I have no idea why it was anchored there.

[YachtForum]

I've been looking for pics of the new Queen ever since her launch! Leave it to a YachtForums member to come through!! Way to go John! Thanks!

Personally, I like the boat you took the pictures from better.