Get Ready for the 2014 Regatta!
Schedule:
- 12pm to 12:30pm
- Boats arrive at The Village Hall for registration and parade.
- 1pm
- Parade begins!
- 1:45pm
- Rubber Duck Race benefiting Family of New Paltz!
- 2pm to 2:30pm
- Boat Race commences!
Live Music at the Gilded Otter featuring:
- DJ BONA-Q
Food and children's activities by the Woodcrest Community on the lawn of the Gilded Otter.
The New Paltz Regatta dates back to May 15, 1955 when the Delta Kappa Fraternity of SUNY New Paltz held a strange regatta on the Wallkill River. A massive auto-parade helped carry strange crafts of all types down Main Street New Paltz, NY. The homemade crafts were concocted of materials ranging from barrels to tractor inner tubes, some held together with little more than ropes and wires.
Nearly a thousand students and townspeople lined both banks of the Wallkill River to watch the excitement. The race began at the "Old Swimming Hole", which today is now the New Paltz boat launch on Plains Road. After all the crafts enter the waters of the Wallkill, they scramble downstream about a quarter of a mile, splashing and floundering for the finishing line, the Rt. 299 Bridge.
The tradition of the Regatta carries on today and has become a symbol of community, eccentricity, and welcoming the summer months in our beautiful Hudson Valley!