While the Blessing of the Fleet kicked off the 10th annual Bristol Harbor Festival on Saturday, it was just one of many highlights of this celebration of arguably Bristol’s most important resource.

The day also saw a stuffie competition, guest appearances by Miss Rhode Island and Miss Rhode Island Teen, live music, and great food, capped off with a traditional littleneck boil.

According to Harbormaster Gregg Marsili, crews cooked about 250 littleneck boil bags, and they went through about 3000 raw littlenecks, 400 oysters, 6 cases of chowder donated by Blount’s, and nearly 600 stuffies. “I can’t even tell you how many clamcakes,” said Marsili.
Leon Silvia won the stuffie contest, which drew 15 competitors — the most in the history of the event.

Though Marsili has not yet crunched the final numbers, he thinks the event brought in about $10,000. Past years’ proceeds recently went into the construction of a new pirate-themed playground at Rockwell Park.

Though nothing is confirmed until after the Harbor Festival committee meets in September, Marsili said that one idea that has been kicking around for a few years is to buy some saltwater fishing year and hire someone to offer fishing clinics to kids from the marina.