There were Playboy bunny ears everywhere
Everywhere you looked yesterday at Mangrove Bay you could see a pair of fluffy Playboy bunny ears.
Premier Ewart Brown's recent excursions to Hugh Hefner's LA mansion were the number one source for satire at this year's Non-Mariners' Race, with GP1 a close runner-up.
The non-contest drew huge crowds of spectators — both on land and at sea — to Somerset to watch a flotilla of 11 homemade rafts make their unsteady way out onto the water to the sounds of a flamboyantly dressed bagpipe band.
One of the most inspired entries was a stripped-down Datsun truck, with oil barrel wheels, golf club side mirrors and pointed references to the Premier's perished Peugeot. It took three people a week to build.
Other non-mariners knocked their vessels up in a couple of hours before the race — including the crew behind the GP1 Grand Slam Resurrection float, according to Sionna Barton, who was in character as First Lady Wanda Brown.
Several rafts referenced the closure of the Island's New York tourism office and the much criticised faith-based tourism initiative but only one saw the potential for humour in the case last Christmas of a ferry driver found under the influence of alcohol.
Captain Alex Jones proudly showed off his sailors-in-training, supping from cans of beer and a bottle of rum.
The winning craft, the non White Heron float - named after a long-gone pub — squeezed in references to Playboy bunnies, New York tourism and the proliferation of cranes on the Island.
Skipper Paul Maccoy said his team, who have entered each year without fail for the past two decades, bribed the judges with a crate of beer in order to secure the victory.
Master of ceremonies Bruce Barritt said this year's irreverent event — held to raise money for Lefroy House — was the "usual shambles".
"It was wonderful. The weather cooperated, it was sunny and there was a huge crowd both on the dock and at sea. There was a lot of pointed political satire — it's gentle I suppose — with at least three references to Playboy bunnies and lots of mentions of GP1."
