Beaufort Water Festival: Now it’s more important than ever to celebrate the water

Wonder if they knew how prophetic the Beaufort Water Festival would turn out to be?

Beaufort’s signature event kicks off this weekend for the 65th time, and the late Carl “Skip” Von Harten Jr. once told me how it got started.

He said the idea came up at a meeting of the Beaufort Water Ski Club, which at the time had 100 skiers who did things like ski to Charleston or ride on each other’s shoulders while skipping across the water.

The club meeting was taking place at the Von Harten Brothers Chrysler-Plymouth dealership on Carteret Street.

The Von Hartens have been in town since the 1700s, mostly associated with the water.

Skip said the Water Ski Club meeting went like this:

“Willard Outlaw — a fantastic skier — said, ‘Hampton has a Watermelon Festival. We should have a Water Festival. That’s where the name came from.”

Indeed, the water skiers did their part to anchor the festival in the heart of Beaufort, putting on dazzling shows before large crowds watching in the town parking lot.

The Lions Club organized a parade, and young girls called Pirettes waved from its floats. The festival had a beauty pageant and a ball and later a street dance and a Lowcountry supper, talent contest, concerts, air shows, bed races, a blessing of the fleet and much more.

But in our community, surrounded by water, I wonder if they knew how precious that water would become.

DOWN THE RIVER

Beaufort is defined by its perch in a gorgeous sweep of the Beaufort River, and its maze of barrier islands laced with gentle tidal creeks and ripping inlets by the Atlantic Ocean.

Its people have earned a callused hand living in the water, and enjoyed life by “going down the river” to camp — or easing up the sandbar on a Sunday afternoon to socialize.

It seems natural to celebrate the water with a sizzling-hot July festival tempered sometimes by sea breezes.

Now, much more than the day the ski club met at the car dealership, we need to cherish the water.

SEA LEVEL RISE

Certainly today we know we should:

Save the water. More careful use of every drop is in high demand because of the saltwater intrusion in the underground aquifers that supply drinking water.

A few years after the Water Festival began, the dream of a few visionaries came true when potable water started being funneled from the Savannah River.

But surface water, like groundwater, is in ever-increasing demand as the population of the Southeast and the number of annual visitors grows at warp speed.

Prepare for change. Wring all the politics out of sea level rise and you still have Beaufort County’s old salts saying the water level is rising.

They say you can look at the astronomically high “king tides” to see how things will look soon enough.

It’s like the biblical story of Noah building an ark. When we live in a county that is 70% water, somebody needs to be paying better attention to the “prophets of doom.”

And now — even as we use reverse osmosis to remove salt from water pumped from deeper wells, and put river water into the ground to save it for seasons of high demand — comes another concern.

The rising sea is expected to aid saltwater’s steady intrusion into underground water supplies.

Respect the water. People who know nothing about the power of water launch into it on tiny boats with full coolers and large families — even when rip currents and tropical storms threaten.

In my newspaper world, I learned the sights and awful feel of body searches along the marsh line. With their rushing tides and shifting sands, folks, these waterways are not a kiddie pool.

Access the water. Our population demands more public access to the water, not less. Yet the Town of Hilton Head Island has closed public parking spots at Burkes Beach, and it has never developed the promised public access point at Singleton’s Beach.

Public access to Buckingham Landing is being squeezed out by a county ferry service.

And natives of the old Lowcountry — before twin engines and GPS navigation — are begging children to put down the iPad long enough to catch a fish or two.

They’re also begging today’s boaters to slow down. The May River can look like the Daytona 500 on a given Saturday. Bluffton was once so famous for enforcing its 30-mph speed limit that travel services routed visitors around it on the trek to Hilton Head. Now it needs to become famous as a no-wake zone.

Enjoy the water. This is where the Beaufort Water Festival became so prophetic. The water would become the economic base. But simply enjoying it in a busier, more crowded community would become an even greater reason to stop and celebrate.

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.

This story was originally published July 16, 2021 at 4:30 AM.