TV Tacoma, the city’s cable outlet, will broadcast the Tall Ships Tacoma Parade of Sail live on July 3.

The broadcast will begin at 11 a.m., according to a city press release. Each ship and facts about the vessels will be shown as they sail into the Thea Foss Waterway to begin the festival.

It will also be webcast live at tvtacoma.com and replayed over the next four days.

I just finished talking with David Doxtater, the executive director of Tall Ships Tacoma. They’re in the home stretch of preparing for July’s festival. The office was certainly busier than any other time I’ve visited, and Doxtater told me he recently moved into a Tacoma hotel so he can spend more time in the office and less time in his car commuting from Bainbridge Island.

Jason Hagey and I are working on a story for this weekend that catches the readers up with what the latest is with the event planning.

The number of ships is down to 31 from 32. The Army Reserve barge has dropped out. Event spokeswoman Lorraine Ralston said its place in the festival was tentative from the start, but the other 31 are still on schedule to pull into the Thea Foss Waterway on July 3.

“We’re bringing in a broader range of ships,” Doxtater said. “We have premium ships. We’ll have the Nina, the Bounty, the Kaisei, the Eagle.”

The anchor will be the Eagle, a 295-foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter. And it wasn't easy to book its appearance.

“We really led the charge,” he said. “We rallied the other (West Coast) Tall Ships events this summer. We got some congressmen involved. We went back to D.C. and did some lobbying. We helped convince them switch their schedule to the West Coast. They weren’t really planning to come here.”

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