Todd Stowe chosen as 69th Beaufort Water Festival Commodore
By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The 68th Beaufort Water Festival came to a close with their Blessing of the Fleet event on Sunday.
While the 10-day event was overall a success, according to the newly named commodore Todd Stowe, it was unfortunate that they had to cancel events on Friday and Saturday due to weather.
“We don’t say that four letter word [rain], instead we say that it was very humid,” Stowe said about the weather.
Rainy weather plagued the festival nearly every day, but unrelenting thunderstorms forced festival organizers to have to cancel the Bed Races and Rockin’ the River events on Friday, July 19, and the Commordore’s Ball on Saturday, July 20.
The Commodore’s Ball is usually the public event where the newly chosen Commodore is announced and introduced. He or she also traditionally shares a dance with their partner on stage while members of the public cheer on.
While Stowe said he is honored to be named as the new Commodore, he said he thinks his wife, Patsy, was more disappointed that the Commodore’s Ball was cancelled than he was.
“I was not looking forward to getting up on stage and dancing in front of all of Beaufort,” Stowe said.
Stowe, who has been a teacher in Beaufort County for decades, has volunteered with the Beaufort Water Festival since 1995 when a fellow teacher invited him to come along and help put up and take down the outer fencing at the festival. When asked what has kept him coming back for so many years, Stowe said that he gets personal satisfaction from volunteering, and it is something he loves to do.
He also said that while he is honored to be the new Commodore, he is sad because it means that he will no longer be able to volunteer with the festival.
“What am I supposed to do with my summers now?” Stowe said.
When asked what his focus will be for the 69th Beaufort Water Festival, he said that they are really going to be focusing on recruiting new volunteers and plan to start as early as January.
Beyond that, Stowe said that he has been around the festival for so long that he is known as the historian of the Beaufort Water Festival and hopes to bring back several events that have not been held in the past few years.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
