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Captain Skip Wilson and his crew won
Best in Show for their North Pole Fair
theme in 2012.
“I decided … we will just be ‘The Pirates Who Stole Christmas,’ and that’s where it went,”
Sturdy says.
The 2008 flotilla also happened to coincide with bad weather.
“The rain quit, and I almost started crying,” Sturdy says. “I knew the minute the rain quit
the wind was coming. That’s where the front blows through. We were fine until we made the
turn up into Motts Channel going toward the bridge.”
Then they got hit with 25 knots on the nose, and the pirate skull went overboard.
“Michael Satrazemis and Van Marr took
turns going on the buggy top and holding that
pirate skull the rest of the way,” Sturdy says.
She calls her husband Van Marr a trooper
for his help. The inspiration for her themes
comes from her parents, Dave and Joyce
Sturdy.
She and Marr decorate their boat docked
behind their home in Wrightsville Moorings.
In 2012, she spent three months of nightly
labor on her garage floor to create Charlie the
tuna, a key part of the “Hooked on Catch’n a
Christmas Wish” theme.
Wilson constructs most of the decorations
at his home in Raleigh then transports them
on a truck to Wilmington to assemble.
Skip Wilson, long-time flotilla participant
His crew starts early Friday morning, the
and reigning Best in Show winner, holds
day before the flotilla boat parade.
the trophy and bragging rights until this
“If we’re lucky, we’re done by noon on
year’s event.
Saturday,” he says.
One of his favorite memories is from 2010 with his theme “Dragon Pulls Santa.”
“It looked so real like it was flying down the waterway,” Wilson says.
The worst was the year of Batman, when his boat with more than 700 helium balloons
never made it past the judges. Coming down Banks Channel, it started to rain and the Joker
fell into the water.
Then as they were moving, Wilson lost hydraulics and steering, so the U.S. Coast Guard had
to bring him out of the parade and back to shore.
Sturdy’s and Wilson’s crews have changed throughout the years, or as Wilson says, friends
have floated in and out.
“The competition is getting hotter,” Wilson says. “… We have kind of upped the ante over
the years. We were the first ones that actually introduced music to it, PA systems.”
Then, they started to incorporate movement.
Covering the walls of Sturdy’s dining room are former flotilla posters and photo collages.
Both Wilson and Sturdy document the annual experiences through traditional and digital
scrapbooks. Wilson remembers when the Best in Show title meant a trophy and bragging
rights less than a decade ago. Prizes like international trips and a Carolina Skiff have since
entered the mix.
“Skip’s been winning. I’ve been winning,” Sturdy says. “But I think it’s bringing in a lot of
new blood.”
Transitioning from her trolley voice “First up. Station one. Second stop. Lumina Station,”
into a rendition of Judy Garland’s “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley” of “The Trolley Song,”
Sturdy describes how her mother always talked about riding the trolley to Wrightsville Beach
when she was young, which is how the 2011 Trolley #9 theme came to win Best In Show.
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF SKIP WILSON