New commodore comes aboard Beaufort Water Festival, with eye toward successful 2022 event
Shawna and Brett Doran visited his parents, Judy and Reggie Lohr, in Beaufort in 1998. The couple fell in love with the community and moved here that fall.
On Saturday, during a board meeting of previous festival commodores, Shawna Doran was unanimously voted commodore of the 66th Beaufort Water Festival in 2022.
It’s fitting. When Doran visited the city 23 years ago, it was during the Water Festival, and she’s volunteered at the big bash on the Beaufort River ever since.
“I am honored and absolutely ecstatic,” Doran said of being named commodore, in an interview Sunday with the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet.
She will replace Erin “Tank” Morris, whose reign as commodore ended Sunday with the close of the 10-day festival.
Doran, a nurse and vice president of quality at Beaufort Memorial Hospital, said her goal is to carry on the festival’s reputation as one of the best in South Carolina and one of the few entirely run by volunteers.
The 49-year-old is passionate about volunteering and promoting Beaufort, the city she loves.
The Virginia native started volunteering at the Water Festival a year after she moved to town and gradually became more involved. She rose to the level of planning coordinator this year, serving as Morris’ right-hand person.
Commodores are chosen from a group of coordinators who organize the annual festival that attracts some 50,000 over 10 days.
COVID-19 made putting on this year’s festival especially challenging. The festival was canceled in 2020, and uncertainty about its fate persisted in 2021.
“We were still in limbo as far as whether things were going to open up or not,” Doran said.
As a result, the festival was organized in three months instead of the usual 10. Doran said both volunteers and the community stepped up to make it happen.
Morris said the festival went off without a hitch. It was rewarding to see the community come back together after more than a year of being separated because of the pandemic, he said.
The number of visitors to this year’s festival is still being calculated, but crowds were strong, Morris said.
“To be able to come out of a pandemic and have that type of showing from the community speaks to the community itself and the festival and how important it is,” Morris said.
Fleet blessed during parade of boats
On Sunday, Doran, Brett, daughter Ava, a sophomore at Beaufort High School, and son Colton, a sophomore at the University of South Carolina, climbed aboard the shrimp boat Palmetto Pride, captained by Cameron Reeves, for the annual blessing of the fleet and parade of boats on the Beaufort River.
Rev. Andrew Trapp of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Lady’s Island blessed the fleet and sprinkled holy water on commercial and recreation boats as they passed before him at Waterfront Park.
John Barber, who announced the event, said the blessing of the fleet is a tradition that started in Greece when a priest would ask for safety for boat crews and a good harvest.
Boats large and small did circles in the Beaufort River, with South Carolina and U.S. flags flapping, as they waited for the tradition to begin. Captains guided the boats carefully along the waterfront — just one bumped the wall — to receive the blessing and a warm reception from those on shore watching the spectacle.
The blessing and parade of boats closed the festival, which Reeves said shows newcomers “what Beaufort’s made of.”
Before the boat blessing, Reeves’ brother, Craig, and others organized a church service in which a pastor preached from a shrimp boat to parishioners seat in lawn chairs on the waterfront.
“We’re taking this opportunity to live out our faith,” Craig Reeves said.
This story was originally published July 25, 2021 at 3:18 PM.
