Rene Linares has a bit of advice for downtown Tacoma merchants looking to profit from Tall Ships: Extend your hours.

Linares, an assistant manager at Lush, a trendy bath and body products store on Government Street, has been enjoying the Tall Ships glow the vessels have cast over downtown Victoria.

“Everyone is happy,” he said.

It could be the ships, or the significant amount of grog and grub selling at restaurants near the harbor. The places are packed.

Everyone may be happy, but not enough to turn over wads of cash for chunks of rustic soap.

It could be timing. It’s hot here. It’s in the 80s, maybe the 90s. People don’t want to be carrying much more than a water bottle. And the big crowds stay down around the harbor as long as there’s a boat to board.

“It’s a little slow during the day,” Linares said. “There are more people in the streets when Tall Ships closes down.”

Unfortunately, Lush and the ships close around the same time.

It’s been slow, too, at Souvenir Liquidation, a long-time vendor of fleeces, sweats, T-shirts and shot glasses. Could be the weather, which is not whispering “better get a nice warm top.”

Or it could be the economy, from the price of gas to the fact that a dollar bill and a loonie are worth about the same.

“I haven’t seen as many people in the square this summer,” said Mary Swift, director of the Maritime Museum of British Columbia on Bastion Square.

From what she’s heard, the weak dollar, the high cost of fuel and more complicated border crossings have slowed Victoria’s tourism economy. But Tall Ships is boom time for the museum, which helped organize the original festival and is woven into this one. The museum is running the pirate school and has heritage displays in the festival’s Cultural Mosaic area. Crews have free admission to the museum, and the captains gathered there for a formal dinner Saturday night.

Walk-through traffic has been way up throughout the ship fest, she said.

Walk-by traffic has been up outside Munro’s, Victoria’s legendary book store, said bookseller Jessica Paul.

“You don’t see it reflected in the store,” she said, despite the maritime books on display in the window. “I’ve had regular customers complain about the difficulty of getting to the store because of all the closed streets.”

If the people strolling past are from the U.S, they might be put off by the fact that publishers price books higher in Canada than in the U.S. It’s a practice that made sense when the dollar was stronger. Now, Canadians see it as punitive.

If they wanted their book budgets plundered, they’d call a pirate. They happen to have a few dozen handy.