The Frolicers: St. Thomas Chili Off Contest

Every August for the past 28 years St. Thomas has a Chili cooking contest the proceeds of which go to local charities. It is sanctioned by the Society of Texas Chili Cookers. This contest is held on Brewer’s Bay Beach and draws contestants from all over the Virgins, Puerto Rico and the US mainland. This year the contest was held on Sunday August 19^th and there were 74 entries which are judged by a panel of judges before the chili is offered to the public. We were anchored in Long Bay so at 8:30 we weighted anchor and motored over to Brewer’s Bay. As we dropped anchor we saw a tent city on the beach and could hear the PA announcing tickets were now on sale and beer was available at 10:00.

The Chili Off Tent City on Brewer's Bay Beach

We quickly took the dinghy in to get the scoop on this event. It turned out the contest didn’t start until noon, but most everyone was set up and the air was full of the aroma of cooking chili. The T shirts were too cool so we had to get a couple.

Love our T Shirts

Leslie is ready to PARTY!

Tickets for drinks were $1 each and a beer was 3 tickets, while the chili tasting tickets were $1 but you got 2 parts to the ticket and tastings turned out to be 1 ticket part per taste. We bought $20 of each! The contest was to go until 5PM when the winners would be announced and the music would end. There were several groups playing throughout the day. There is not much more to say other than we used all our tickets and had a great time meeting wonderful people. The Pictures say the rest.