The hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours South Sounders invested in Tacoma's 2008 Tall Ships Festival paid off for the second time Saturday.

Mike McLeod of Tall Ships Tacoma's Board of Directors, accepted the award at the International Sail Training and Tall Ships Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Tacoma has taken part in the festival only twice, in 2005 and 2008. Both times it has won Port of the Year. This year, it outdid the cities of Victoria and Port Alberni in British Columbia and San Francisco, Oxnard, Los Angeles, San Diego and Dana Point in California. In 2005, it also bested Vancouver, B.C.

The Tall Ships Challenge cycles between the east and west coasts and the Great Lakes each three years.

Captains and crew members have the biggest say in who wins Port of the Year.

It matters to them that the city of Tacoma arranged to have their bilges pumped, that union electrical workers had safe power strung to their ships and that volunteers kept crowds controlled and docks secure. It matters to them that shoreside folks welcome them with warm smiles, shopping specials, and free internet service.

McLeod believes that Youth on Board, a program pioneered by Tall Ships and Metro Parks, impressed ASTA and the skippers. That program trained young people in seamanship and placed them on Tall Ships for the sail from Victoria to Tacoma. Later in the summer, half a dozen of those young people went to California to sail aboard USCG Barque Eagle.

"We were one of the few ports that really embraced the sail training opportunity," McLeod said. "I'm told that ASTA is using the program we developed as a model."

While Port of the Year is an honor, the volunteers' first payoff was a well-run festival that drew crowds of 400,000 to the Foss in July.

Organizers estimated that 2,000 volunteers invested tens of thousands of hours in the festival. They built docks, gathered sponsors, picked up trash, directed crowds, catered to crews, and after all the ships had sailed, they left the Thea Foss Waterway with about $1.5 to $2 million worth of improvements.