Parading behind boat captains with enormous yachts and decades of flotilla experience, Mike Spivey and his five-man crew felt their confidence in winning the 31st North Carolina Holiday Flotilla slipping away. They had left empty-handed the one other year they entered, so placing second or third would be a satisfying achievement, they decided.
When results were revealed several hours later, however, Spivey’s turtle-themed boat decorations were awarded Best in Show by the five flotilla judges.
“We thought we had a winner when we left the driveway,” Spivey said after collecting the $5,000 cash prize and iconic trophy at the awards brunch Sunday, Nov. 30. “But then we put in and saw everybody else.”
Spivey and his brother-in-law, Delmer Atkinson, said the “save the turtles” theme came to them over the summer. Spivey began building the turtle’s shell while Atkinson worked on creating a head with a Santa Claus hat. They drove from Alamance County to Wrightsville Beach Nov. 29, the day of the boat parade, to put the two pieces together on Spivey’s boat, Angler Management.
“The whole thing actually came together around 4:30,” Atkinson said. As the sun set, he switched on the lights and the turtle came to life, illuminated by 7,000 green and red Christmas bulbs.
At 6 p.m., the line of glittering boats began cruising slowly down the waterway past thousands of spectators crowding the bridges and docks. Last in line came the turtle, steered by Spivey’s brother, Chris. The other crewmembers manually moved the turtle’s appendages so it would appear to be swimming through the water.
“Everyone had a job, we were all doing something on the boat,” Atkinson said.
Spivey raised and lowered one glowing flipper while his friend Tim Reece manned the other flipper and turned the head back and forth. Atkinson played a saxophone while his sister, Luci Spivey, played the bells.
“Luci and I grew up playing,” Atkinson said. “Our dad always had us play for him after dinner… it was good to play music with my sister again last night.”
Several other boats in the parade were transformed into creatures as well. Ava Werstlein and Leslie Armstrong won the People’s Choice award for their holiday hound dog boat promoting animal adoption. Flotilla committee chair Pres Davenport said the “Furtilla” theme took home the prize after receiving 6,000 text message votes from onlookers.
Brent and Chris Jernigan, brothers from Lake Waccamaw, turned their 11-foot pontoon boat into a shimmering blue hummingbird. Brent Jernigan shaped the bird’s body out of chicken wire and PVC pipe in his backyard and strung on the lights the night of the flotilla. He completed the theme with a glowing red flower on the bow of the boat.
“I said, we need the flower, or else we’re going to look like the Christmas mosquito coming down the waterway,” Jernigan said.
Although the miniscule boat inhabited the character of a hummingbird perfectly, the brothers’ choice of theme was based on more than just the diminutive size of their craft.
“We lost our mom four months ago,” Brent Jernigan explained, “and she loved hummingbirds. She was in the nursing home and she made a hummingbird piece of art the day she died, which [Chris] brought to the funeral. And the next day, a hummingbird showed up at the house.”
“It was kind of a sign,” Chris Jernigan added, “and a way to honor Mom since she couldn’t be here with us this year.”
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