Some parade have their place ... others don't. Bet you the Admiral wanted the guard to sit down because he knew the speeches would be long winded affairs. ;D.
However, in my mind, for a change of Coast command parade, it would have been sufficient to have a guard and Colours party, manned by the PAT platoon, and then one representative platoon from each unit in the command (say 25 pers) simply doing a formed parade in front of the HQ, and have a very short outgoing and even shorter oncoming speech - with no speech from their senior supervising officer there to witness the change.
You do the standard Colours handed to the outgoing commander, passed by him to the senior supervising officer, who passes them to the oncoming commander. That's the symbolic change of command part done. Sign the papers, that's the formal change of command part done, then speeches (short-short-short) and then a general salute by the parade and all the senior bunch leaves ... parade dismisses. You can do all that in one hour, everybody in proper uniform.
The idea of "manning the sides" of the ships for cheering can be relegated to the bin of history as far as I am concerned. It used to be done while the outgoing commander was "rowed ashore" by his senior officers in a whaler going by each ship in the fleet. Well, we don't friggin have rowed boats anymore, so get over it.