Powerboat Fest Called a Roaring Success

After getting off to what promoters called a “flying crawl” on Saturday morning, the city’s powerboat festival made a comeback Sunday, drawing tens of thousands of fans to the beach, pier and Harbor Village for a glimpse of the speeding ocean daredevils.

Attendance figures are still incomplete but organizers say that hotel occupancy and attendance were above expectations.

“We exceeded our projections,” said Bill Clawson, executive director of the Ventura Visitors and Information Bureau. “It started off slow . . . but picked up a significant amount of steam after that.”

Even final figures will not be precise because spectators did not stream through a single gate as in events like the California Beach Party.

Instead they stood, four to five deep along the beach near Harbor Cove. More than 1,000 more crammed onto the pier. And clusters of spectators gathered along more than five miles of beach from the harbor up past Surfer’s Point.

The city provided $60,000 to sponsor the Ventura Offshore Grand Prix Festival with the hope that the event would fill hotel rooms to capacity, bring in 30,000 spectators and perhaps snare the festival for future years.

Organizers estimate that 30,000 people crowded elbow-to-elbow into the Harbor Village area alone, and Ventura hotels were full two of four nights. Visitors booked rooms for a total of 5,000 to 6,000 nights, beating projections by about 1,000.

Room rentals generate the most money for the city from the event because of a 10% bed tax. But the success of the first Offshore Grand Prix festival on the West Coast cannot be measured just in economic terms, say promoters, because Ventura is getting publicity nationally and internationally.

More important, it looks like the boats will be back. The racers loved Ventura, say organizers. And Clawson has visions of an ever-bigger event that will eventually rival the festival atmosphere of the America’s Cup in San Diego.

“At the America’s Cup the whole festival is built around a race you can’t even see. Here we bent over backward to have the race go right up the coastline. People could actually see the race,” Clawson said.