Teamwork is paying off for tall ship ports
A partnership approach – which is helping Sunderland and its fellow 2018 ports to succeed in attracting big numbers of vessels for next year’s race series – will take a new twist soon. Sign-ups of vessels for the 2018 event is going really well and Ian Flannery, project officer for The Tall Ships Races Sunderland 2018, explained why. It’s all to do with a link-up between Sunderland and Esbjerg, in Denmark; Stavanger, in Norway; and Harlingen, in Holland. Instead of individual approaches, they are joining forces to send letters to the ships representatives. “Sail Training International are quite impressed with the way the four host ports of 2018 are working together,” said Ian, who explained the next step.
“We have done joint letters from the four host port city mayors and we are drafting together a joint host port offer for each individual ship.” The process of building momentum for next year’s races continues and will include a series of events to be held on board the visiting ships – known as deck events. “We have got 25 expressions of interest for deck events,” said Ian, who said some of the vessels were capable of hosting occasions on board for up to 300 people. One of the biggest ships to confirm its involvement in Sunderland is the Santa Maria Manuela, which helped to boost the numbers of confirmed tall ships to 24. To find out more about the opportunities connected to next year’s event, visit www. tallshipssunderland.com