After soggy opening, Beaufort Water Festival serving up Motown and Frogmore Stew
Opening ceremonies to Beaufort’s popular water festival were canceled Friday due to rain and lightning but the popular summertime show is back on schedule.
The popular “Motown Monday” music show with local band Deas-Guyz is up next at Waterfront Park, with gates opening at 7 p.m. and the show beginning at 8 p.m. Check the Water Festival website for tickets and complete list of events for the festival which concludes on July 20.
On Wednesday, the talent show, which attracts scores of local acts of all varieties, begins at 7 p.m.
And the Lowcountry Supper featuring the dish called Lowcountry boil or Frogmore Stew — sausage, corn-on-the-cob, potatoes and shrimp — is from 6:30 p.m.-7 p.m. Thursday.
“It was a little soggy,” Commodore Todd Stowe said Monday of the opening weekend weather.
On Friday, lightning within a half mile and rain, which wasn’t supposed to let up until 10 p.m., prompted the organizers to postpone the opening 7 p.m. ceremony to Tuesday.
But even without the opening remarks, the Saturday evening concert in the park went on as scheduled with country headliner Chris Janson performing for 3,600 people, just under the normal attendance for the opening show, Stowe said.
Because of the closure of the promenade due to structural issues this year, about 70,000 people are expected to attend the 10 days of the festival which is a little bit below normal. The closure has also prompted some changes to Beaufort’s biggest festival. That includes the raft race, which was moved to Sands Beach in Port Royal Saturday morning.
“The raft race was a big hit,” Stowe said. “The town was really happy about it. The racers were really happy about it.”
Fixing Waterfront Park’s structural issues will likely be a multi-year process so there’s a good chance the raft race may return to Port Royal, Stowe said.
