Back in the 90s when Dan and I still owned our 25ft Bayliner, the "LINDAN" and Susan and Jack Watt had just gotten the "Thunderbird" back, a group of us decided to go to Gimli for (The Icelandic Festival) "Islendingadagurinn". In those days they always had a boat decorating contest on this long weekend. Everyone would decorate their boats with streamers, flowers or balloons etc. and around noon on the Sunday we would all cruise on out of the harbour, down the beach front, then back to port. We were definitely going to take part in that.
As the plans started to be made, we started to think about the boat decorating. Our group were taking three boats to Gimli that weekend and all of us decided not to decorate our boats and to concentrate on decorating the "Thunderbird". Being the Icelandic Festival we decided to turn her into a Viking ship.
We divided into groups each responsible for part of the
decorations. The Bird was given a pop up tent for a Viking Helmet, stuffed orange garbage bags shaped with clear packing tape, made her horns. She was given a Paper Mache Dragons head as a figurehead and was decorated down each side with cardboard Viking "Shields".
When we were finished she certainly looked Icelandic. We were all on board partying as we cruised on out of the harbour and got rounds of applause from the shore, as we passed along the beach.
We didn't follow the others back to port, but instead we anchored off the beach and spent the day swimming and partying. When we did put into port we found out that the "Thunderbird" had won first prize of a gift certificate at Seagull's restaurant in the brand new Lakeview Hotel. It was great fun and the prize was just a bonus to the fun we had coming up with ideas and creating the decorations.
A REALLY GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL
