Matt Jennings yells as he rocks out to The Pirates Charles during the Fifth Annual Northern California Pirates Festival along the waterfront in Vallejo. (Chris Riley/Times-Herald)
The annual Northern California Pirate Festival will not be setting up anchor at the Vallejo Marina Green this year.
Organizers of the popular event — which draws approximately 10,000 people each summer — sent out a news release on Facebook on Tuesday night saying that “several issues have come up and we feel the site is no longer tenable.”
The letter went on to say that Ray Amsbury — one of the people most responsible for the creation of the festival — died unexpectedly on March 17.
“If any one person was MOST responsible for the creation of the NorCal Pirate Festival … it was Ray,” the letter states. “Many years ago, we were sitting around lamenting that we had no pirate festival anywhere near us … and it was Ray who exclaimed, ‘Why don’t WE make one?’ If you ever met Ray, you know that it was impossible not to like him. He was the kindest pirate you could ever meet, with a Santa-like twinkle in his eye, the warmest smile, and he always made time to talk to everyone that ever walked into his booth. We all love him dearly and this has hit us very hard.”
The organizers said that with a “heavy heart,” the festival would not take place in Vallejo this year. They say “the venue has worked well enough for the festival, but over the years several issues have come up and we feel the site is no longer tenable.”
“The park is hard to secure and requires far more security than any event should have to pay for, the letter states. “The Mare Island Channel has gotten shallower and is very difficult to have any kind of a ‘ship presence.’ There are other issues, but the short version is that we have been hard at work trying to find a new venue to hold the festival at … we have still not had any luck with finding a new location that would provide everything it needs to succeed.”
On Wednesday, Vallejo Chamber of Commerce President Shawna Gilroy said that the decision was a loss for Vallejo.
“From the Chamber perspective this is a big deal because it was a very good family-friendly event,” Gilroy said. “It’s also an economic loss because the event brought in a lot of tourists. Those people that went to the event would also visit our shops and restaurants. But more than anything this is just sad. It was such a fun event for so many people.”
Organizers said they still wanted to find a new site in time for the 2023 festival, but the passing of Amsbury was “the last straw.”
“We are taking time to recover from this terrible loss, and soon we are going to resume our hunt for a new venue for the festival,” the letter states. “Please believe that we understand this is a disappointment to all our wonderful friends who were looking forward to the festival returning this year. But it is our sincere hope that during this time we will find a new and better site and the festival will return even stronger than before.”
The festival has not been held since 2019 — it was canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19 and Assembly Bill 5, which requires companies that hire independent contractors to reclassify them as employees.
Gilroy said that it’s too early to know whether or not the city relaunches negotiations to have the festival back in Vallejo in 2024.
“A lot of that is up depending on what they want to do,” Gilroy said. “It depends on if they find a different location or if they want to continue to work with us.”
