With a new director in location and artwork decided on, the 41st Destin Seafood Festival is coming together.
The competition, scheduled for Oct. 4-6, takes location along the Destin harbor from HarborWalk to Heron Harbor. The 3-day occasion will function neighborhood and nearby seafood, artwork, crafts, and amusement.
Plus the occasion is also a charitable occasion that benefits the Destin Charter Boat Association. The DCBA, in turn, places the money proper lower back into the network supplying a scholarship for the Miss Destin recipient as well as assisting fishermen who are down on their good fortune. The DCBA has also helped with enhancements at the Destin Little League Park.
The new executive director for this 12 months’ pageant is Cayse Collins. A resident of Destin seeing that 1982 has been to nearly every seafood festival.
“I’ve genuinely served as a supplier at the seafood festival,” Collins stated, noting her husband who is a musician has played in the competition every now and then.
So when Jami Jones, who served as director of the competition for five years, stepped down, Collins made a few inquiries.
“I positioned out some feelers and requested who turned into taking up and they stated ‘How approximately you?’” Collins said. “It changed into the form of serendipitous for us the way it labored out. I am excited.”
Jones, who also co-owns the Big Red Grill together with her husband Casey, stated she stepped down as director once they determined to open a new eating place in Niceville.
“I knew I wouldn’t have the time it takes to run the festival efficaciously,” she stated. “I became born in 1978, identical 12 months because of the competition. I feel like getting the competition to the 40th year changed into a pleasant manner to transport on.”
And the forty-first is starting to take form.
“We’ve gotten quite a few (seller applications) and they’re still coming in,” Collins stated.
The last day to use for a supplier spot on the festival is Saturday.
However, Collins stated, anything postmarked Saturday continues to be precise.
“We’re proper heading in the right direction with final 12 months’ competition,” she stated, noting the 2018 competition had 100 to 125 companies.
“It’s absolutely thrilling to look at all of the distinct sorts of matters … I’m intrigued to look at what number of fishing-associated items there are. They fall proper consistent with the subculture here in Destin.”
Representing the pageant along with his artwork is neighborhood fisherman and artist Michael Seth Williams.
Williams’s artwork became one among eleven entries for this 12 months’ festival poster/T-blouse. The artwork turned into selected by way of a committee.
“The detail in his artwork is certainly beautiful and great … It’s so stunning and unique from things we’ve got done inside the closing several years,” Collins stated. “It’s honestly a print of a redfish he stuck.”
“I’m terrifically excited,” Williams said approximately being selected.
Williams, who lives in Destin, stated he’s continually had pen or pencil in his hand drawing from nature.
“I’m large into ink and watercolor and I do a variety of loose-hand drawing,” he said.
As for the redfish depicted in his design decided on for this 12 months’ poster, it is a print of a 26-inch redfish he stuck whilst kayak fishing on Choctawhatchee Bay.
“I sense like the redfish is the brand new pink snapper and is similarly iconic in terms of game fishing within the Destin region,” he stated.
He made a Gyotaku print of his redfish and combined it with his illustrative style imposing charts into a bit that stuck the festival committee’s eye.
“What’s now not higher than incorporating the Choctawhatchee Bay into the fish in which it became caught, and blending the spirit and factors that embody it,” he stated.
