Maritime Festival will be back in August, pandemic permitting
No bands, no blessing, but the show must go on. The Gig Harbor Maritime Festival will return August 21-22, a few months later than usual, after a long hiatus due to the pandemic.
“Many, many people have already reached out to use because everybody is anxious to have an event,” said Warren Zimmerman, executive director of the Gig Harbor Chamber of Commerce, which host the festival. “We’re trying to put together a ‘reopening of the community’ theme.”
The festival is the city’s biggest tourist draw. It’s usually held in June, in conjunction with the traditional Blessing of the Fleet, as the harbor’s commercial fishing boats are prepared for the summer season.
It had to be postponed last year, then canceled, as the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March.
Laura Pettitt, tourism and communications director for the city, said the event is important to the city’s culture.
“It is part of who we are,” Pettitt said. “It is very important to our identity and it was really hard to see it not happen.”
Now, hosts of the event hope that the pandemic will be more under control come August.
Permits issued
“We have permits already issued,” Zimmerman said. “Those permits are based on the assumption that we will be in whatever phase opens up the community.”
Zimmerman said he understands plans may need to be changed if Gig Harbor is not in the right Safe Start phase for the event to go on.
“If we don’t get to that phase, the city will not authorize the permits. I entered into that with that understanding,” Zimmerman said. “With all intents and purposes, we are going to do it.”
There will be no customary blessing of the fleet, though event organizers are working to find other enjoyable events to be in its place.
“We are reaching out to the fishermen. We’re trying to find out if, possibly, they may have ships coming back from Alaska in August,” Zimmerman said. “Maybe we can do a ‘welcome home’ rather than a blessing of the fleet as they depart.”
New water activities
The August weekend, with its warmer weather, could allow for new events to be added.
“We’re also looking at doing some additional water activities because it’ll be later in the year and warmer,” Zimmerman said. “Typically, in June, it is too cold to be running around a whole lot in the water. We’re trying to link up with some groups like the Canoe and Kayak Club to see if there is maybe some activities with them. We’ve talked to the dragon boat people, maybe we can do some dragon boat races.”
Zimmerman said there are a lot of loose ends still being worked out, but the staples of the festival will still be there.
“We’ll still have a run. We’ll have a fun run the morning of the 21st followed by the parade,” Zimmerman said. “In 2019, we had 2,400 in the parade alone, so we anticipate there are going to be a lot of people in the parade again.”
There will not be any school bands, as school will be out.
“It’ll still have entertainment,” Zimmerman said. “I’m trying to get maybe a little more professional entertainment this year to offset the loss of the local entertainment that we might have otherwise.”
There are also plans to partner with local businesses, such as restaurants, to do a food booth setup that Zimmerman hopes will “include the entire harbor” in the event.
This story was originally published March 7, 2021 at 5:30 AM.
