Courtesy / Friends of Windjammer Days
The longtime Windjammer Days Festival has extended the shoulder season in Boothbay Harbor and meant more revenue for local businesses.
Updated: June 12, 2019
Windjammer festival means positive economic impact for Boothbay area
Courtesy / Friends of Windjammer Days
The 70-foot schooner Alert, from Bailey Island, will participate in the 57th annual Windjammer Days Festival in Boothbay Harbor. The festival continues to grow outreach and participation.
Now in its 57th year, the annual Windjammer Days Festival in Boothbay Harbor has boosted the local economy.
With expanded marketing, that’s expected to grow.
Windjammer Days marks the kick-off to summer in the Boothbay region.
Fourteen windjammers — sailing ships with multiple masts — are slated to participate in the festival this year. Most hail from midcoast Maine and some are coming from as far as Gloucester, Mass. Some date to the early 1900s. The festival, scheduled for June 23-29, is organized by Friends of Windjammer Days, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, according to a June 10 news release.
The ships are scheduled to arrive in Boothbay Harbor on Wednesday, June 26, under full sail for the Gathering of the Fleet, the signature event of Windjammer Days.
For the second year in a row, there will be drones flying over the windjammers as they enter the outer harbor. The footage can be viewed live on a jumbo LED screen in Whale Park, complete with narration about each of the visiting boats.
The arrival of the windjammers, with their characteristic three to five masts and square sails, during the Parade of Sail, is a highlight of the week-long festival.
Expanded shoulder season
The festival has grown over the years, said Mark Gimbel who, with his wife, is managing director of the festival.
In its first 50 years, the festival was only two days. Over time, it shifted from mid-July to late June, in order to accommodate ship captains who, in July, were starting their peak tour boat season in their home ports.
“They didn’t want to give up that revenue stream in July,” Gimbel said.
The new schedule, before the Fourth of July, expanded the Boothbay region’s shoulder season, he said.
Friends took over management from the local chamber of commerce seven years ago and turned it into a week-long festival, he said.
The idea, in part, was to absorb activities of the long-time Boothbay Harbor Fishermen’s Festival, he said. That festival, founded in 1974, was discontinued in 2016 due to declining attendance, according to the Boothbay Register.
Among the activities adopted by the windjammer festival were the Fishermen’s Festival’s codfish relay race, blessing of the fleet, parade of boats, and lobster eating contest, he said.
Improved marketing
The budget of about $50,000, which goes for things like security, tent rentals and marketing, is funded by corporate sponsors and private donations, so it remains free of charge. Friends hired a marketing director, improved the festival’s website and expanded media exposure. Its first media sponsors were Maine magazine, followed by Down East magazine, he said. This year’s sponsor is Yankee magazine. The goal was to expand reach throughout New England, he said.
“The first year we took over Windjammer Days, we figured the one Achilles heel we had was the marketing,” he said. “So we hired Northeast Media Associates, owned by Angie Helton.”
Gimbel credited Helton with helping Friends connect with Yankee magazine.
Increased exposure has benefited local businesses. For example, the festival’s website has a “stay” tab. In 2018, the first full year of pre-festival tracking, the “stay” page had approximately 22,000 organic hits. “Organic” traffic consists of visits from search engines, while direct traffic is made up of visits from people entering a company URL into their browser, according to smartbugmedia.com
For 2019, “It looks like by July 1 we will have had a 25% increase in the number of organic hits for the ‘stay’ page,” he said.
It’s estimated the festival draws approximately 10,000 attendees, who stayed for one day or multiple days, and it’s estimated attendance has increased 30% over the past decade, he said.
The occupancy rate at major lodging establishments during the festival is near 100%.
“Without Windjammer Days, it would be closer to 70% before the Fourth of July,” he said.
A formal economic impact study hasn’t been done. But Gimbel, who owns three shops in Boothbay Harbor, anecdotally attests to positive impacts.
“Our revenue would be 50% lower in our stores if it were not for the Windjammer Festival,” he said.
Increased attendance
Gimbel said greater exposure through Yankee is expected to expand attendance this year. In the meantime, the number of windjammers has grown. One reason is the Friends’ strategy for enticing more schooners.
“We’ve looked at bringing schooners here as more of a partnership,” he said. Many schooners, he said, run tourist trips in June, so traveling to Boothbay Harbor would cause them to lose money. So Friends asked local resorts to book charters on the schooners, making it worthwhile for them to come, he said. Gimbel said he deployed that strategy initially with Schooner Ardelle in Gloucester, Mass., which is run by Essex boatbuilder and captain Harold Burnham, an expert in the world of historical schooner renovation.
“I figured if Harold Burnham came, other would follow,” he said.
That proved to be the case. Massachusetts vessels scheduled this year are Adventure, built in 1926 in Essex, Mass.; American Eagle, the last fishing schooner built in Gloucester, launched in 1930; and Ardelle. A notable visitor will be the Bowdoin, built in East Boothbay in 1921 by Hodgdon Brothers Shipyard and sailed to the Arctic Circle. The Bowdoin is a training vessel for Maine Maritime Academy and the official sailing vessel of the state of Maine. Other vessels include the Harvey Gamage from Portland; the newly restored Mary E, built by Thomas E. Hagan in 1906 in Bath and now owned by the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath; and True North, built by Goudy & Stevens of East Boothbay in 1939.
One on-land vessel, 156-foot Ernestina-Morrissey, was built in 1894 and serving fishermen, Arctic explorers, and supplied U.S. bases in the Arctic during World War II. It is now being rebuilt by the Boothbay Harbor Shipyard, but will be available for tour on June 24, from 4 to 5 p.m.
For more information and schedules, visit Boothbay Harbor Windjammer Days.
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