The Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Festival has honored local fishing community for 50 years

The Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Festival, happening May 4-5, will continue a 50-year tradition of honoring local fishers and the history of the county’s coastal fishing village.

Bodega Bay’s annual festival — part community fundraiser, part celebration of the start of salmon fishing season — began in 1973 as a revival of a 1950s-era fete called “Discovery Day.”

According to the Rancho Bodega Historical Society, the people of Bodega Bay started the Discovery Day Festival in 1958 to raise money for the town’s new volunteer firehouse. The event, originally held in October, honored the memory of Lt. Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, the Spanish naval officer and explorer of the Pacific Northwest who the town of Bodega Bay is named for.

At the first Discovery Day celebration, a boat parade around the inner harbor was led by Eddie, Steve and William Smith, members of the local Miwok Smith family who began Bodega Bay’s commercial fishing industry in the 1920s.

The annual Discovery Day, which featured live band music, carnival rides, a potluck supper, fireworks and dancing, was discontinued after 1964. In 1973, the Bodega Bay Chamber of Commerce resumed the festival, moving the date to the start of salmon season in spring and changing the name to “Fisherman’s Festival.”

The festival continued to benefit the local volunteer fire department as well as the community’s new ambulance service. Since the early 2000s, the festival has operated as a charitable nonprofit benefiting Bodega Bay community services, including area schools, the historical society, and fishing and safety organizations.

At the 42nd annual Fisherman’s Festival in 2015, then 90-year-old resident Aldo Cima recalled the modest beginnings of the fete — consisting of a simple blessing and some hot dogs in the parking lot — now a popular tourist attraction along with the rest of the town.

“It was just like an old fishing village,” Cima said. “It was just a little place then.”

According to an April 4, 1974, Sebastopol Times preview for the second annual Fisherman’s Festival, activities would include trap shoots, pony rides, arts and crafts sale booths, carnival games and rides at Doran Park, and a costume ball and fish fry at Bodega Bay Grange Hall. Visitors attending the 1974 festival included former 49ers quarterback Y. A. Tittle and congressman Don Clausen. The highlight of the event, as with every year since, was a parade of decorated fishing vessels sailing into the outer bay for the “Blessing of the Fleet” ceremony, at the time performed to the tune of the now-defunct Sonoma County Sheriff’s Bagpipe Band.

The Blessing of the Fleet ceremony, performed by local clergy officiates, aimed to ensure a safe and successful fishing season in the ensuing year. After the blessing, a flower wreath is thrown into the waters to honor sailors lost at sea.

Over the decades, events at the Fisherman’s Festival expanded to include “bathtub races” (in which handmade water crafts of all kinds were entered), foot races, golf tournaments, kite flying contests, a windsurfing regatta, live local bands, educational exhibits, a craft fair and art show, and plenty of barbecue and seafood.

Each year, the festival — which regularly draws thousands of visitors — operates under a specified theme, and the participating boat owners deck out their ships accordingly. A Dec. 9, 1981, Healdsburg Tribune article listed some themes of past festivals: “Mariner’s Mardi Gras (’81), “Fisherman’s Fantasy” (’80), “Carnival Afloat” (’79), “Good Ol’ Days” (’78) and “Bodega Heritage” (’77).

The theme for this year’s Fisherman’s Festival is “Fishin’ Ambition.” The fete will include traditional events such as the boat parade and “Blessing of the Fleet,” as well as an art show and sale, live music, kids’ entertainment, wine tasting and fair food, a wooden boat challenge race, and “Henry 1” helicopter demos and public safety displays.

Check out the gallery above for photos of past Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Festivals.

Editor’s Note: The photo gallery has been updated to correct a previous photo caption from the 1976 “Blessing of the Fleet” ceremony at the Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Festival. In that photo: The Rev. Henry Faucher, pastor of St. Philip Apostle Church in Occidental, aims a holy water sprinkler in the direction of passing boats during the “Blessing of the Fleet” ceremony at the Bodega Bay Fisherman’s Festival in 1976. (The Press Democrat)