POINT PLEASANT — Fresh off a successful festival last summer, members of the Point Pleasant Sternwheel Regatta Committee are charging full speed ahead to organize activities for the event in 2009.

And if their latest confirmed act is any indication, visitors at this year’s Regatta won’t be disappointed.

Whitney Duncan, a finalist on the television music competition “Nashville Star,” will perform as the headlining act during this year’s three-day event in downtown Point Pleasant.

Jacob Hill, chairman of the Regatta Committee, acknowledged the popularity of last year’s headlining act, Chuck Wicks, who has gained fans around the country and is scheduled to appear on the upcoming season of ABC’s reality hit, “Dancing with the Stars,” but said the committee has found another superb act for this year’s event.

“We are excited about having Whitney at our 2009 festival,” Hill said. “She is another up-and-coming hot artist on the country music charts, and we expect that she will be doing very well on the charts by the time she arrives in Point Pleasant, just as Chuck Wicks did last year.”

According to a news release, Duncan signed with Warner Brothers Records in 2007 and has a new single and album being released this year.

Her debut album, Right Road Now, introduces Duncan as a new voice in contemporary country music, a woman who matches her vocal prowess with songwriting of real depth and breadth. She wrote every song on the CD, in conjunction with her co-writers and some established Nashville tunesmiths. It celebrates love, both new, in “Kinda Crazy,” and well established, in “Fireflies;” chronicles love’s failure in the self-assured “When I Said I Would” and the moody “Burn it Down;” and does justice to pure sass in “The Bed That You Made” and to the raw pathos of “God Close Your Eyes.” With the title song, Duncan and her co-writers perfectly encapsulate the roses-from-thorns dynamic that infuses the relationship in the song and the musical rebirth Duncan has experienced.

Duncan will take the main stage at the Point Pleasant Riverfront Park July 3.

Additional activities are being planned for this year’s Regatta, which will take place July 2-4. For more information as it becomes available, visit www.pointpleasantregatta.org.