Leave the Chesapeake in mid-October and this coast hands you a reason to stop roughly every other weekend until Christmas. The lighted-parade season moves south at about the pace of an unhurried delivery — a wooden boat show in October, three parades in three states on one Saturday in November, the Space Coast in December. Time the run to it and the trip half plans itself.
October opens with wood, then chrome
The Georgetown Wooden Boat Show takes the Front Street waterfront in historic downtown Georgetown, South Carolina on October 17 and 18, 2026, with the Goat Island Yacht Club regatta and the auction the evening of Friday the 16th. More than 100 classic wooden boats sit on land and in the water, and the Harbor Historical Association runs it. Georgetown is right on the Waterway, which makes it one of the easier October stops to fold into a southbound leg.
Two weekends later the Lowcountry swaps hulls for coachwork. The Hilton Head Island Motoring Festival runs the Lowcountry Driving Tour on Friday, October 30, the Car Club Showcase on Saturday, October 31, and the Concours d'Elegance itself on Sunday, November 1 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 10 Club Drive. Transient space on Hilton Head goes early that weekend, and the island's marinas are the reason a lot of people arrive by water at all.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving is the one to plan around
November 28, 2026 is the pinch point. Three lighted parades go off the same evening, in three different states, and you can only be at one of them.
At Wrightsville Beach the NC Holiday Flotilla runs November 27 to 29, with the boat parade starting at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday the 28th. In Savannah the Lighted Boat Parade takes the same Saturday, running from Eastern Wharf up to the Talmadge Bridge and back past the Plant Riverside District and the length of River Street — twice, so a spot on the water is worth holding. And on the St. Johns, the Jacksonville Light Boat Parade takes downtown that night, judged in four classes: vessels under 30 feet, vessels 30 feet and over, sailboat, and corporate.
Pick the latitude that suits where you want to be on December 1, then book the berth. Thanksgiving-weekend dockage in Wrightsville, Savannah and Jacksonville is spoken for long before the snowbird fleet arrives, and each of those towns is a short walk from a dinner worth tying up for.
St. Augustine takes the pressure off the schedule
One night out of a whole autumn is a thin margin, and St. Augustine is the fix. Nights of Lights runs from November 21, 2026 through January 18, 2027 — two months of it over the bayfront, so you arrive when the weather and the tide say so rather than when a start gun does. The flip side is that the town stays busy for eight straight weeks. A slip there on a December Saturday is a call you make in October, not one you make on the way in.
December works its way down the Florida Waterway
Palm Coast holds its Holiday Boat Parade on Saturday, December 5 at 6 p.m., along the Waterway from the North Cut Canal down to the Grand Haven gazebo. Every kind of boat is welcome and the award categories are optional, which makes it an easy first one to enter if you have a string of lights and no ambition beyond using them.
A week later the Space Coast closes the season. The Cocoa Beach Christmas Boat Parade starts at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 12 from Marker 101 near Centennial Park on State Road 520, and works the Banana River. To be judged, a boat has to be registered and carry a number readable from shore, and the captains' meeting is on Wednesday, December 2.
⚠️ That captains' meeting lands three days before the Palm Coast parade. If you want both, sign up for Cocoa Beach before you leave Flagler County.
What this calendar asks of the boat
Every one of these nights is the same job: idle speed, after dark, in company, with guests aboard who are not driving. That rewards a cockpit that seats a crowd, deck lighting and enough house power to run a rig of lights all evening, and a boat you can hold in a crowded river without drama.
A Sea Ray Sundancer 370 is the straightforward answer — express-cruiser shelter for the cold nights north of Florida, and a cockpit built for exactly this. A Grady-White 345 Freedom does the same work with more deck and less roof, which is the better trade from St. Augustine south. An Aquila 42 Coupe gives you the flattest, widest platform of the three, plus the shoal draft that turns the skinny stretches of this run into a non-issue.
⚠️ Florida's cold-weather manatee zones tighten exactly when this calendar peaks. FWC publishes speed-zone maps county by county, and Duval, Flagler, Volusia and Brevard cover most of what you will run in November and December. Pull those four before you plan a night transit.
Tony's Take
The one I would build a trip around is Georgetown. It is early enough that you are not fighting the fleet, the boats are the show rather than the excuse for it, and the town is small enough that you walk everywhere from the dock. The Saturday-after-Thanksgiving problem I would solve by going to Savannah — running River Street twice, at night, with the bluff lit above you, is worth the detour it costs. And if you get south late, do not sulk about it. St. Augustine stays lit until the middle of January, and the third week of a two-month festival is the week you can actually get a table.
— Tony Smith, Founder — Minted Yachts
Running this coast south this season? Tell us where you want to be for Thanksgiving and where you want to spend January, and we will tell you which boat makes that schedule easy. Email TS@MintedYachts.com or call +1 (404) 805-9819.