PORT ANGELES – Organizers are gearing up for the second-annual Maritime Festival in Port Angeles.
Saturday and Sunday, offer a number of free events and tours around the Port Angeles waterfront. Most of the activities will be centered near City Pier according to Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Marc Abshire.
It started out about three or four years ago as a Waterfront Day, so people may remember the waterfront day and that was a Port of Port Angeles and Port Angeles Yacht Club event that they did one day in May. Then with the introduction of the tall ships and some other ships and boats couldn’t come till June, we decided we would try to find a way to celebrate the maritime nature of Port Angeles. Now, the whole idea behind the festival is to do it not just one day but actually a whole weekend of celebrating maritime activities, family fun and all kinds of great things going on this year that we added from last year.
The second-annual run of the festival will again also feature music, food and drinks available; even a giant “Kraken” slide.
The tall ship Lady Washington will be available for tours and sailing. The tall ship Chieftain had to cancel its appearance due to mechanical problems.
Tours of the waterfront activities will be led by Port of Port Angeles commissioners Connie Beauvais and Colleen McAleer. Beauvais says the tours will let people get a behind-the-scenes look at what is happening on port properties…
We are going to take the tour through the log yard again and explain everything that is at the log yard, and we’ll go out on the terminals again. But this is a time that gives us an opportunity to educate the public about what the port does and how important it is to our community. Just with our marine terminals alone, they support 924 direct jobs in our county and those are all very high-paying jobs.
The Coast Guard will also perform a search and rescue demonstration off City Pier on Saturday at 2 pm.
The maritime festival runs 10-4 both Saturday and Sunday.