Whangārei Maritime Festival organisers are already planning for 2024 after this weekend’s “stupendously successful” first time event drew more than 13,000 people.
Whangārei Town Basin-based Blackball Maritime Society chairman David Irvin said the first planning meeting for next year will be on October 19.
The festival was held over Saturday and Sunday during the weekend with 22C sunny weather adding to its holiday atmosphere.
It is New Zealand’s first and drew nearly three times the number of people expected, the crowd size making it one of Northland’s biggest events.
“It was the right event, at the right time, in the right place - and the weather was spectacular. Everything that could go right did,” Irvin said.
Whangārei Mayor Vince Cocurullo described the festival as “absolutely fabulous”.
“I’m blown away by the success of the festival,” Cocurullo said.
Cocurullo formally opened the festival on Friday, saying it built on Whangārei’s long maritime heritage.
He was staggered by the number of festival attendees.
“Whangārei love it here, you can't get better than this,” Cocurullo said.
He said the $40,000 Whangārei District Council put towards the festival had been money well spent.
Irvin said the free family-fun-focused festival celebrated Whangārei’s maritime spirit past, present and future.
“It was stupendously successful,” Irvin said.
The festival adds to the Town Basin’s history which includes the New Caledonian yacht Ouvea quietly slipping in to berth there for several days in 1985 — ahead of its crew of saboteurs later blowing up the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland.
Organisers are working towards the festival becoming a trademark week-long Whangārei celebration in the future.
Irvin said a special Marsden Cove-based event for the Coastal Classic yachties sailing in New Zealand’s biggest annual yacht race from Auckland to the Bay of Islands over Labour Weekend was on the cards. More than 170 boats compete.
He said expanding further down the harbour from the Town Basin would allow for the event inclusion of the New Zealand Sailing Trust-owned 26 metre yacht Steinlager 2 from Auckland that Sir Peter Blake sailed to victory in the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race.
“They wanted to bring the yacht up this year but it's too big to fit in the Town Basin,” Irvin said.
About 100 different options were available to festival goers at the Town Basin venue, which was decked out with a kilometre of fluttering blue bunting.
Festival highlights included hundreds of people lining both sides of Hātea River for a hugely popular one-off demonstration helicopter emergency sea rescue.
The ancient Japanese art of Gyotaku was also extremely popular. A constant stream of young people created more than 500 fish prints on T-shirts, bags and material pieces — by applying paint to real fish such as mullet and making prints with their bodies in the same way fishermen once used to record their catch.
Among the many boats on display at the festival was the restored 1930-built 20 metre classic yacht Arcturus which was once owned by famed World War II army officer General George Patton, and later in the 1950’s by actor Gene Kelly.
Irvin said one satisfying festival feature was that it produced only a single bag of rubbish to landfill due to sustainable event waste management.
Wowed festival attendees Paul and Josefina Kirkman were among those present.
"This will become a landmark for Whangārei. Today establishes it. Wonderful, wonderful, helped by the weather but wonderful nonetheless,” they said.
The Town Basin-based Blackball Yacht Club, whose members are from among about 200 overseas boats annually which come to the Town Basin and Whangārei Harbour to escape the Pacific’s tropical cyclone season, donated $2500 at the festival towards scholarships for students sailing on the R Tucker Thompson — among almost half a kilometre of boats dockside during the event.
By Susan Botting, Local Democracy Reporter
Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air
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