Westerly — At five minutes till post time in the crowded bar at The Bridge Restaurant early Saturday afternoon overlooking the race course — also known as the Pawcatuck River — frenzied bartenders announced they had sold zero Mint Juleps.

Odd.

Because, aside from that, a lack of gentrified women wearing grandiose, floppy hats and no one singing "My Old Kentucky Home," it must nonetheless be said that the pageantry and excitement at the 19th annual Pawcatuck River Duck Race approached levels expected at this coming Saturday's Kentucky Derby.

Sponsored by the Ocean Community Chamber of Commerce, the Duck Race featured a field of 20,000 identical rubber fowl dumped into the gurgling waterway from a payloader on the Pawcatuck River Bridge. The ducks — a bobbing swarm of cheery neon yellow — then floated a few hundred yards down an increasingly narrow channel defined by temporary floater buoys before finally crossing the finish line.

Each fake duck has an ID number and gamblers — er, philanthropic citizens — can sponsor one for $5 each. Proceeds from the race benefit more than 40 local nonprofit organizations and schools, and the Grand Prize for the winner is a trip for four to Walt Disney World or $2,500 cash. The other top 99 finishers also earned any of a wide variety of prizes.

Judging by the happy cross-section of families and fans lining Donahue Park and seated outdoors at the Bridge — whether sponsoring ducks or not — the race clearly is one of those much-anticipated "harbinger of spring" events.

It perhaps was a slightly tense day for Lou Martocchio, events manager for the Ocean Community Chamber of Commerce. He graduated from the University of Rhode Island in December, landed at the Chamber, and had to immediately oversee what is the organization's signature event. But if there was any anxiety, it was hidden behind his focus and a ready smile as he strode through the park filled with information booths, an inflatable moonwalk and obstacle course for kids, burger and hot dog stands, a rock-climbing wall sponsored by the Rhode Island National Guard and a display area where martial arts groups performed routines to the classic rock strains of Boston, Survivor and Steppenwolf.

"When I first heard about the race, I was relieved to find out the ducks were not real," Martocchio said an hour before the race. "Which is good. I think the environmental folks wouldn't be happy if we were putting 20,000 real ducks in the river."

Lisa Konicki, longtime president of the Chamber, says it's hard enough to deal with fake ducks, though this is the same collection they've had since the first race. "I had to experiment with several samples of rubber ducks to see if they'd float properly," she explained. "I'd take them to the pool at the YMCA to see how they'd do."

After she found a manufacturer whose ducks were precisely designed to match the race's buoyancy requirements, Konicki got the board of directors to approved the purchase of 20,000 rubber ducks — presumably not a routine budget item for most chambers of commerce nationwide. A week before the inaugural race, the boxes arrived. Alas, they were the wrong ducks and were missing integral weights that provide ballast. Employees of the rubber duck company — "From the president down to the person who answers the phone," Konicki said — spent the week feverishly gluing weights to the birds, which arrived just in time.

By now, the duck race routinely goes off at peak efficiency, and Saturday was no exception. Westerly residents Barry and Caitlin Morse and their 2½-year-old daughter Charlotte were finishing a picnic in the park just in time for the ducks. "It's actually our first time to come to the race," Barry said. "It's such a nice day, we wanted to get out. And we thought, 'Let's see ducks.'"

"Actually, Charlotte's seen the signs advertising the race all week," Caitlin said. "Last year, she was too young to understand what's going on. This year, she knows ducks, though we think she's mostly excited about the truck and how all the ducks fit in there."

On the bridge, selling sponsorship tickets, first-time Chamber volunteers Cahrissa Dasso and Lucan Berry, who recently moved to the area from Billings, Mont., were glad to be part of it all. "We're pretty active in volunteer work," Dasso said. "It's a great way to meet people if you're new to an area, and you're helping people and organizations. We weren't quite sure what to expect of a duck race, but it was pretty clear everyone around here knows it and looks forward to it."

At 1 p.m., in the undercard Corporate Duck Race — where 150 ducks sponsored by area businesses floated the course in pursuit of a $1,500 cash prize — Rich Stockman, who has released the corporate race ducks for every one of the 19 years, performed his job flawlessly and with honor. "It's something I enjoy doing," he said. When asked whether his position of responsibility and access to the birds could theoretically result in "fixing" the race, he laughed, "I don't know enough about how they make rubber ducks to know how that could be possible."

Thirty minutes later, as post time for the big race drew nigh, Christine Stevenson of North Attleboro wandered onto the bridge to see what was happening. In town to drop off her daughter at a birthday party, she saw the crowd and came over to investigate. "I love this kind of thing, an annual event that a whole community gets behind," Stevenson said. "It's true I was curious to see if the ducks were real, but this is still great."

After driver Doug Murry maneuvered the payloader into position and Martocchio did a three-two-one countdown over a microphone, the scoop of the machine tilted forward and, with a loud percussive sound, a hell of a lot of fake ducks landed in the river and began floating their way to glory.

It's perhaps hard to improve on such a time-honored, beneficent event, but Martocchio was asked if, next year, perhaps all of the ducks could have names like the animals at a horse race. Fans, it was suggested, could holler out the names of favorites as the throng bobbed by.

"That's something to think about," he said. "I'd have to run it by the board. One thing's for sure, though. If you're going to name 20,000 ducks, there's plenty of room for creativity."

r.koster@theday.com