The City of Sarnia expects to break even and make a small profit from next month's Tall Ships celebration that includes Borderfest and Artzscape.
Several majestic ships will sail into Sarnia for the festival August 8 -11, musical groups will rock-out in Centennial Park, and beautiful artwork will be on display by the bay.
City Parks and Recreation Director Rob Harwood said with ticket sales and sponsorships, he expects the city won't need the $500,000 council set aside to guarantee costs for the ships.
"Everything is working really well," he said. "We've had a lot of advanced conversations with the ships, they're very excited to get down here and our harbour is the perfect place to host them. Transport Canada is very happy with the advanced planning that we've done and the attention to detail, so we're not anticipating any hiccups."
Harwood said the Tall Ship cruises are already sold out, and they're trending really well towards selling out the boarding passes as well -- boarding and viewing passes are available at Tourism Sarnia-Lambton or at Sarnia City Hall.
Harwood said everything is on track for an epic weekend in Sarnia-Lambton with tens of thousands expected along the waterfront.
"We're working very collaboratively with the local businesses to make sure that we put together some good traffic plans so that we can avoid the congestion. Sarnia Police Service and Sarnia Fire Rescue have been working with us, so everyone is just very positively collaborating on this," said Harwood. "We're going to have shuttles set up between Starlight Casino Point Edward and the event, and between Lambton Mall and the event to try avoiding some of the congestion. Because of the synergy of the three groups, we're actually able to achieve some efficiencies through security, through portable washroom facilities and all those kinds of things."
The last time the Tall Ships Challenge made its way to Sarnia was in 2003.
