About the Festival
A Port Aransas tradition since 2014.
The Port Aransas Wooden Boat Festival is an annual three-day, family friendly event that features handcrafted kayaks, paddleboards, skiffs, and sailing boats, along with historic Farley boats from the local Farley Boat Works.
It celebrates a heritage that began in 1915, when the Farley brothers built some of the first production fishing boats in the country right here in Port Aransas. After the original shop closed in 1975, the Port Aransas Preservation and Historical Association purchased the site in 2011 and trained a new group of volunteers to restart the island’s boatbuilding tradition.
Around 120 boats have been built at Farley Boat Works since it reopened. Each fall, the festival brings those boats, their builders, and the wider wooden boat community together on the waterfront.