The Olympia Harbor Days Festival, a free event offered every Labor Day Weekend, is an award winning free and family friendly event that showcases many of the vintage tugboats of the Puget Sound with a walk aboard show at the docks and races in the bay. Visitors to the event may also find tall ships, steamships, other historic vessels of twentieth century commerce, tribal canoes, and current recreational small watercraft. Harbor crises and sailings on Budd Bay are also offered.
On land, festival attendees enjoy great food, great music, great artisans, plus nautical and marine themed attractions, and hands on activities, including Olympia’s tugboat heritage, tribal history and the working waterfront with Port of Olympia tours. All in all, here are over 300 things to do and see.
Bring your kids to this family-friendly maritime celebration and fuel their dreams of working on the water and sailing the world when they grow up. Olympia Harbor Days Festival also includes locally hand built small watercraft, tribal cultural sharings, sand carving, a LEGO Harbor Build, and dancing pirates just to name a few. The location at Percival Landing is a well-known Pacific Northwest maritime landmark located in downtown Olympia, the WA state Capitol, and is the southern-most tip of the Puget Sound, a destination for many who travel by boat. Hotels, shops, gallery’s, a children’s museum, restaurants, and bars featuring locally brewed beers, wines and distillery products are all within walking distance of the event.
Update: A drone light show has been added Friday night, as well as a practice show on Thursday night (8/31). Scheduled highlights include:
Thursday, August 31: 9:30 PM pre-event drone test rehearsal
Friday, September 1: 5PM docks closed at sunset, drone show at 9:30PM
Saturday, September 2: 10AM – 7PM including on board touring from 10AM to 5PM
Sunday, September 3: 10AM – 6PM with tugboat races in Budd Inlet starting at noon.
