After the fireworks are over, after Carnival Village takes its midnight bow for the year, there's one more opportunity for revelers from home and abroad to celebrate culture, friendship and fun.
The annual soak-out at Magens Bay cannot be found on any schedule put out by the V.I. Carnival Committee. But every year on the Sunday after the Saturday Adults' Parade and fireworks, hundreds of Carnival participants and spectators spill onto the sand and fill the party sheds at the beach. Calypso and soca fill the air, as does the sound of the annual seaside steelpan tramp led by members of the Territorial Court Rising Stars Youth Steel Orchestra.
This year about a hundred people surrounded the small pan-around-the neck troupe as its members marched through the surf playing a tune by the late Trinidadian composer Aldwyn Roberts, the Lord Kitchener. Two women led the way holding between them the Virgin Islands flag.
Ivah Chesterfield, a pannist with the St. Thomas All Stars, was among the spectators. He said it's been 10 or 11 years since the first soak-out tramp, and that it's something he enjoys especially since it's a chance to let someone else play the music for a while.
Glenn "Kwabena" Davis grinned as he scratched out the rhythm on an ornate gourd. "Boy, am I glad we're having this last lap," he said. Adding to the band were a flute, a saxophone, a police whistle blown in staccato and an artfully played beer bottle.
For a Puerto Rican band leader named Vito, the beach party was an extra treat after the Carnival parade, an event he said he's come over to see for the past 17 years. "I love it, I never miss," he said.
Bathers stopped and stood to watch the tramp march by. Moments after it passed, some little boys raced away after a soccer ball. Across the road at one of the party sheds, a group of Virgin Islands ex-patriots home for the holidays danced the Electric Slide to the music of Xpress Band. Childhood friends, now middle-aged, they reminisced as their children and grandchildren met second and third cousins and started making Carnival memories of their own.
