The Australian Wooden Boat Festival planned for February 2021 will not be proceeding, the festival’s General Manager Mr Paul Stephanus announced today.
Mr Stephanus said that considerable planning had already gone into next year’s festival and it is disappointing that it cannot proceed as planned.
“Being such a large festival with an enviable international reputation and appeal, the planning for each festival commences as the previous festival wraps up,” Mr Stephanus said.
“Like so many other festivals and events world-wide, the uncertainty created by the COVID-19 situation has necessitated a complete rethink for the Australian Wooden Boat Festival.
“Over recent months we have been exploring options to keep our 2021 Festival afloat. We modelled an event heavy with fencing, security, and strict crowd controls. We looked at options for a gathering for boat owners only and not open to the public. We even toyed with the possibility of moving the whole Festival online. But time after time we ran into the same problems. The risk was always too high, the expenses were unmanageable, and the end result was not a Festival that we could be proud of producing. And, in the worst case scenario, if things went truly pear-shaped in the weeks leading up to the event, the whole exercise may have crushed the AWBF entirely.
“This is Hobart’s best summer festival, Tasmania’s largest free event, and one of the world’s premier wooden boat festivals,” Paul Stephanus added. “It is simply not worth gambling all that away for the sake of one event in the middle of a global pandemic. If we back away gracefully this time, we can ensure that we’ll be there again in 2023.
“This was a difficult and disappointing decision for the AWBF Board to have had to make.
“However, we are committed to delivering the 2023 Festival, 10-13 February, and planning is already underway.”
AWBF image © from CS archives