It was all hands on deck as final preparations for the launch of the Australian Wooden Boat Festival were put into place on Thursday.
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The iconic festival continues to go from strength to strength, with about 220,000 visitors expected to attend.
About 40 per cent of these visitors will come from interstate or overseas.
This year marks 375 years since Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first spotted Tasmania, and the connection will be celebrated in 2017 with the Netherlands named as the guest nation.
Boat building students from Amsterdam and Rotterdam have been working hard in Franklin for the past nine weeks to construct a celery-top pine wooden boat to be launched as the festival’s grand finale.
This year’s event will also include an impressive showing of tall ships, an exhibition on Tasman at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, model boats, the annual quick ‘n’ dirty boat challenge, and children’s activities.
Festival general manager Paul Cullen said the event was not just about the stunning array of boats, but it was also a celebration of Tasmanian food and drinks.
“We will be able to see what the maritime culture of the Netherlands is like compared to how we build boats here in Tasmania,” Mr Cullen said.
“It has massive appeal to all sorts of people and it’s free, so why wouldn’t you come down and visit it three or four times.
“We calculate quite closely the value of the event in terms of tourism … and it proved last time to have a direct spending effect of almost $30 million.”
The free event will take over the Hobart waterfront on February 10 to 13.