Peel Traditional Boat Committee held two competitions to find designs for PL17, which will be used to promote the town’s traditional boat weekend.

The committee says the number and quality of the entries far exceeded its expectations and thanked all the artists who showed interest and supported the competition.

The winners are local artists Andrew North and Natalie Norton.

Andrew’s design will be used on a limited edition poster, which will be displayed around the island to promote the event.

Signed copies of the poster will be given to the skipper of all entered boats and unsigned A3 size posters will be on sale in the Sailors’ Shelter, Peel.

Andrew was also successful in the T-shirt design competition and his design will be used on adult sized T-shirts, which are sponsored by Bushy’s Brewery and will have its logo on the back.

Natalie’s design will be printed onto children’s T-shirts, which will be sold throughout the weekend at the Sailors’ Shelter.

A further entry, from Douglas-based artist Peter Hearsey was highly commended by the committee and will be used on greeting cards and notelets also available from the PTBW shop.

Peter has donated his painting for the committee to raffle during the weekend.

Raffle tickets costing £1 each will be on sale throughout the weekend at the Sailors’ Shelter.

All of the artists have been invited to exhibit and offer for sale additional items of their work in the Sailors’ Shelter which will be open to the public throughout the event. Everyone is welcome.

Once again Bushy’s Brewery is the main sponsor for this year’s event and it is brewing a special beer, ’Old Seadog’, which will be available in Peel throughout the event.

The organisers are expecting 25 to 30 traditional boats to take part in this year’s festival, which is taking place during the first weekend in August.

The boats will arrive on Friday, August 4, and, weather permitting, will take part in parades of sail on Saturday and again on Sunday before they set sail for home ports around the Irish Sea

This is the 27th year of the event.

One of the highlights of the weekend is the ’quick and dirty boat building competition’ which takes place on Saturday, August 5, on the tongue in Peel.

Teams construct boats during the day from a limited supply of materials and equipment.

They race across the mouth of the River Neb as the culmination of the day.

Winners of the best designed boat and the winners of the race choose charities to which prize money is donated.