It started out as a great idea by Peter Bent, and grew into a community-wide effort to make this year’s Gloucester Schooner Festival the best to date! It seemed so evident…build some docks so that people can get up close and see the schooners like never before. And by all accounts, that is what we did. The 480 feet of dock space became the star of the show. 3000 people visited the boats on these docks over 3 days. It was a great addition and a real benefit for the community.

So many people were involved in this effort, but a few need special mention. First, is Geoffrey Richon who steered the building of the docks from start to finish. Peter Bent who was involved in every step from raising funds to launch to finding a place to store them. The Mayor and the City for allowing them to be prominently placed at I4C2. Beauport Hospitality Group and the Dusky Foundation, who saw and funded the vision. And many thanks go out to the members of the Gloucester Schooner Festival Committee for their job getting together the event of the year. As these docks get stored for the winter, Maritime Gloucester can’t wait to re-engage the whole community and bring them back next summer. The plans (and the fundraising) to make these docks longer and give more people the chance to get aboard starts now! Thanks for a great Festival. See you next year!