Boat festival cleans up

... but here comes that sinking feeling

IT was a winning feeling for team Wild Oats in the Quick ‘n’ Dirty Boat Race on the final day of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival. Rory Spinaze Littlejohn, left, Ruben Thompson and Zephyr Coull celebrated as did festival organisers who said the four-day event attracted 200,000 people and generated more than $30 million for the state.

IT was colourful controlled chaos at Constitution Dock yesterday as eight cane and canvas boats of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival’s Quick ‘n’ Dirty contest set sail.

This was the final test for children who had spent the weekend designing, building and decorating boats, complete with sails and oars.

They raced their bright and creative constructions around a course of buoys in one of the last events of the festival. And it was mayhem. One young crew was left bobbing in the water in their lifejackets after their vessel, A Fine Ship, capsized.

But most of the little faces stayed dry above the water.

The boat that tore ahead of the pack was Tarremah Primary’s Wild Oats, whose 12- year-old designers Rory Spinaze, Rupen Thompson and Zephyr Coull, were frankly not too surprised to have won.

“We weren’t so sure, but it was pretty easy,” they said.

Having built a practice boat prior to the festival and with lifejackets reading “pull the plug on plastic”, the boys seemed to be one of the more prepared crews.

“We wanted to raise awareness for the plastic that’s going into the ocean,” they said.

Reflecting on another festival complete, chairman Steve Knight said how grateful he was for all the individuals and groups involved in making the festival such a great success.

He estimated the festival generated “in excess of $30 million of economic benefit to Tasmania”. Mr Knight said many of those from interstate were estimated to have spent not only the four days of the festival on the island but 10 or 11 days in total, spending their money elsewhere in the state.

“The feeling we have is that there are at least as many people who attended the festival as there were who attended the last one, where we had over 200,000 come throughout the four days,” he said.

Though it is too early to know the exact numbers, the chairman said he thought there were more visitors from interstate and overseas than in previous years, which in 2017 made up over half of the total number of punters.

Organisers said visitors had come from all over the world, including the US, Europe and China, with the US group representing a large proportion of those from overseas, being the “featured nation” of this year’s festival.

With about 400 volunteers, Mr Knight expressed gratitude for all the support.

Despite the rain here and there, the sun shone on much of the weekend in which Mr Knight said he saw “tens of thousands of happy people”.

The festival included dozens of local food stalls, seafood cooking demonstrations, sailing legends telling their stories, 256 tiny ships in bottles, local buskers, and of course the wooden boats that lined Hobart’s docks.

The tall ships sailed the festival to a close yesterday afternoon, filling the Derwent with just a taste of all that the weekend had included.