Sail Boston 2009

The ships have already started sailing into Boston Harbor as the city gets ready to host 45 tall ships for Sail Boston 2009. It’s one stop in the trans-Atlantic regatta that begins in Spain and continues on to Halifax, Canada from Boston, before finishing in Ireland. To find out how big it might be — or won’t be — this year, we spoke to Pat Moscaritolo, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau.

This year’s Tall Ships festival is a scaled-down event compared to years past because of disagreements with the city over public safety costs. Tall ships events in Boston have been major tourist events, generating money for restaurants, hotels and retailers. Pat Moscaritolo: Somewhere between 300,000 to 400,000, depending on the weather. If we get great weather, we’ll probably have 400,000 people over the next four to five days. And they pack a pretty important economic punch for our visitor industry, given all that has happened this past year with the downturn in economic activity as it relates to the visitor industry.

Primarily because we are not having a parade of sail this year. Normally, on the first day, you would have these 45 ships that would be coming in over the horizon and sailing in to Boston Harbor. It’s pretty much a day-long event and the parade of sail attracts large amounts of people. I mean, it’s a grand parade of sail — large amounts of people — but with it come large costs as well, and that just wasn’t feasible in this economic environment.