Planning your fun!
any boat can join on the day of the even without needing instructions or registration and be able to freely mix with registered boats The registration and instructions help you find a place in line, create formations with other boats, have group activities and design parade floats and games. For example all the boats in your group brought a kite, or eveyone is dancing the same dance, or pirate costumes and nerf gun fights, inflatable balloons that are tied to make a “Back the Blue” flag, and other fun.
Boats travel at a walking speed of 3-4 mph from the giant flag at Mary Alice Park to where Bald Ridge Creek ends at Lake Lanier and this should take them 30 minutes. No registration or fees are needed. You may register to get a place in line, develop a plan for parade floats, games, stream live or find raft ups and beach parties. We ask that you post pictures of your boat in sight of the giant flag at Mary Alice Park to confirm you started the parade and then one picture at the Green BR 1 marker at the end of Bald Ridge Creek so that we can have a total count of boats who attended a parade for Peace Officers Day. We are expecting our website to go down on Peace Officers Day due to high traffic. Please be patient with it and try again to post your pictures or chat and have fun with other boaters on other days.
Introduction
The parade is designed so that any boat can join it without needing instructions or registration. The registration and instructions help you find a place in line, create formations with other boats, have group activities and design parade floats and games. For example all the boats in your group brought a kite, or eveyone is dancing the same dance, or pirate costumes and nerf gun fights, inflatable balloons that are tied to make a “Back the Blue” flag and more.
What The Parade Looks Like
The Peace Officers Day boat parade is a real parade. It is not a poker run where boats wildly zoom from check point to check point in a random order.
The speed of the parade is a walking speed of 3 or 4 mph. The distance of the parade is two miles. It will take one boat 30 minutes to travel the 2 miles of the parade. “Floats” are a group of 10 boats. Floats can organize crowd flags, skits and games between them. One boat leads and the other 9 boats stay in a square formation of 3 boats wide and 3 boats deep behind the leader. Floats are spaced at least 50 feet behind each other and boats in the float stay at least 10 feet away from each other. On the average, for small boats, each float would easily fit into less than 200 feet. If the float was 200 feet long, at 3 mph, it would take 45 seconds to pass by a starting point. Larger boats have their own calculations.
The parade is designed so that random boats can enter the parade line at any point and need no instruction to complete it. The instructions are designed to help you create some interesting floats, games and fun along the way.
At this rate, 800 boats would complete the parade every hour. This is why you should consider registering a time to start.
The floats go slowly enough so that actual floats can be constructed, or “crowd flags” can be stretched across 1 or more boats. Paddlers can also join this parade. Everyone can join into the “Mutiny Against Crime” Games” being played between boats or floats and with online players. Very importantly, at this speed the parade can easily stop if needed, just like any other parade. If giant floating flags, inflatable balloons, people paddling dressed as sharks, remote controlled boats, drones or kites are moving along with the parade, they also need a slow speed.
A Flag, Communication and Points
The 10 boats in the float can be registered weeks before the event or assembled instantly on the day of the event. Instructions at “Boat Parade Tutorial” tell you how to register your float ahead of time and will show you the communication page for each float.
Assembling a float of 10 boats on the day of the event
A “leader flag” and a communications officer known as a “Gamer” is needed on any boat that wants to take the lead. The Gamer cannot be the person driving. The Gamer must be familiar enough with the Pirate Dive Bar website to login the other 9 boats if they are not able to.
The Leader Flag
The leader flag can be hand drawn on a piece of paper with a sharpie by simply writing “Leader” or you can get an official one by visiting the “Bootymaster” on this website. If you are paddling, you can improvise the leader flag with your sharpie by writing the word leader on a T-shirt or Cap.
On boats that are playing Mutiny Games, a Bootymaster is needed. The Bootymaster is the first one to wave the leader flag and holds onto it until the float is formed. Once the float is formed she can then assign a “Standard-Bearer” to wave, dance or sing with the flag according to the bribes she gets from the boats in her own float, other floats or online players.
The Gamer
The Gamer needs to be familiar with the Pirate Dive Bar website. Although the Gamer can participate online, it is best to have the Gamer in close proximity to the standard-bearer or the Bootymaster. They do not have to be on the same boat, but that works best. One person on the lead boat will hold up a piece of paper or poster board with a float number on it that the Gamer gave them. If boats are able to login, they use the float number to login to the communication room for the float. If they cannot login, for example they are paddling a canoe or have no cell phone, then then the gamer creates a bogus profile for them and can help them play, upload start and finish pictures or communicate.
The Queue For The Parade
Take turns, let people in and do it like any other Queue you stand in. When in the parade proceed one float behind the other. There is no need to rush. The leader of the group makes the go/no go decision, just follow the leader of your float.
There are suggested start times and random start times! If your float wanted to begin 3 days or 3 hours before the parade, you can. If you wanted to go the next day because you missed being in the parade you can. It won’t be the same, but you still get to log your presence at the parade and post pictures of you starting the parade and finishing the parade.
Start & Finish
Once the Gamer has logged 10 boats into their float they can cross the starting area of the parade. The Gamer will upload a start picture and a finish picture to register their position in the parade. The timestamp for the uploads gives the place number in the parade.
To create the picture for the start, the word “Start” is written on a piece of paper to be in the foreground of a picture. Besides the word start, at least one of the boats in the float and the landmark is in the picture. The picture for “Finish” is done in the same way.
The Gamer should upload the “Start” and “Finish” picture to the floats communication room within a few minutes of taking it, as the time of the upload is your parade timestamp and position.
Flag, Bootymaster & Gamer
During some events such as “The Tropical Adventure Competition”, the flag is called the Hero, the Bootymaster is called the Hero Manager and the Gamer is called the Team Leader.
The flag or Hero is the cause or reason for the event. The Bootymaster or Hero Manager is the person who recieves the loonies, points or donations. The Gamer or Team manager is the person organizing the activity.
If you represent a nonprofit, you can apply to use the Pirate Dive Bar for your event. You give us your nonprofit paypal email address and during your event when people donate to get loonies, that donation goes directly into your paypal account. We do not handle it or take out any fees.
Mutiny Games Overview
“Mutiny Against Crime” games are where you spend your loonies. The Pirate Dive Bar has carnival barkers, rigged games, bribed judges, over priced food, scams-a-plenty, cheap trinkets and cheaper wenches. Just what you would expect to find at a place called the Pirate Dive Bar. We steadfastly only take loonies, bets, bribes or dares as payment, unless you have a good story as to why you can’t pay right now.
You begin by being catfished out of your loonies. This is the first step in Mutiny Games. The person that just catfished you scored higher on the leaderboards for “Catfisher”. You now score lower on the leaderboards for “Catfish”. Their “Pirate” Leaderboard also increased.
Whenever you transfer loonies for a bet, a poker game, a bribe to a judge, a dare, an extortion attempt or as bait in a catfishing tournament the first thing that happens is that you lose your loonies. A “Bootyrat” may have also taken a bite out of your loonies that were transferred.
The only way to resolve the situation is to transfer more loonies, this time to bribe the Bootymaster. The Bootymaster may ignore the bribe, punish you for bribing too high or too low or punish an innocent person at random. The Bootymaster does not know if the person she is punishing for the crime you were part of is innocent or guilty. So, she picks an innocent person to punish, so that she will know for sure.
Now, there is a chance that whatever transfer you made with your loonies resulted in a fair and honest result. You should consider sending a bribe to the Bootymaster to report this suspicious behavior. Action should be taken. Against whom, is not known.
The purpose of the loony transfers is to make the booty of the Bootymaster bigger. Each float has their own Bootymaster and they decide what lies about the rules they will tell you. They also decide if you won or lost a bet or more than likely that not only did the two people betting lose, but several other people just lost as well. If she has a favorite, you can bet they will win. But you would lose that bet even if they did win.
Equipment
You need a flag on a 10′ 1/2 ” cpvc pole for the standard-bearer. Drill two holes and put a zip tie through each hole and into the grommets of your flag to place it at one end of the pole. The Gamer needs a cellphone, a piece of paper and a sharpie. For the Bootymaster you need a ruthless, greedy tyrant armed with a nerf gun, beach balls or something similar to hot sauce wings used as punishment. A mean stare and the threat to sing Karaoke also work for arming the Bootymaster.
Prepare
When you registered for the parade you where given a place on the list. If your place is 2400 and 800 boats an hour cross the starting line then don’t come until 3 hours after the parade starts.
Form A Gang
All pirates need to form a gang. The gang is the people on the 10 boats that travel together to make the “Float”. (the boats are the float, the people are the gang)
While cruising slowly at parade speed or at anchor, the standard-bearer raises the leader flag up and attracts the attention of the other boaters who see the flag. The boaters that understand the signal start to follow that boat if they think that is the gang to be in. When they get close enough, the gamer shows those boats the number he has written down on a piece of paper. Those boaters use that number on the piratedivebar.com site to join that gang and continue to follow that Captain. If this is their first time, the gamer writes down the piratedivebar.com website and shows it to them.
Winds approaching 10 mph or rough weather conditions should cancel any parade or event.
The donation page is ruled by the “Bootymaster”.
A “Loony” is short for “Dubloon”. This is our game piece and a reward to you for donating. The Bootymaster also emails you a tax receipt for your donation and posts it in your files found on the High Seas > My Stuff so you can find this receipt and download it at anytime.
The description of how a boat parade is created as a free and open event will also show you how to have raft ups, pool parties, motorcycle rallies and much more with just slight adjustments. You can list or find parades, rallies, parties, Karaoke Challenge Games, Mutiny Games and much more anywhere in the world. You can attend any of these events online and give challenges to the people in those events.
Lets start by describing a boat parade so that you will know how these events can be planned or happen instantly.
Go to the Boat Parade Tutorial to begin.