New London — Hopes for a 2020 tall ships event in the city — buoyed just two weeks ago by the prospect of state financial support — appeared dashed Tuesday following word that the state would not provide funding.

Mayor Michael Passero said an official in Gov. Ned Lamont’s office informed him Monday that the state could not commit to the $300,000 grant Passero sought in a meeting in Hartford earlier this month. At the time, Passero told the OpSail Connecticut Board of Directors that Lamont’s senior adviser, Jonathan Harris, had been “receptive” to the funding request.

“We were unable to get the commitment we needed,” Passero, an ex-officio member of the OpSail board, said Tuesday evening. “This committee (OpSail) doesn’t want to be the one holding up Tall Ships America. They don’t want to be on the hook.”

At a special meeting Tuesday, the OpSail board voted unanimously to withdraw from consideration as a port of call during next year’s Tall Ships Challenge Race Series along the New England coast. Newport, R.I.-based Tall Ships America is organizing the series in connection with the state of Maine’s bicentennial celebration.

“At the moment, without the necessary funding, we must regretfully decline the opportunity to host the tall ships event,” read the board’s motion, according to Marian Galbraith, the board secretary. Galbraith announced the vote during a meeting later in the day of an OpSail committee planning the next installment of the group’s signature New London event, the Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival.

“Their mission is putting on the maritime heritage festival and they work very hard to pull that off every September,” Passero said of OpSail Connecticut, a private nonprofit. “To throw a tall ships event on top of it is asking a lot. … And somebody has to pay for it.”

Estimates of the total cost of a tall ships event in New London have ranged as high as $700,000 to $800,000, with funding to be supplied by corporate sponsorships, private donations and other sources as well as the state.

Passero had yet to reach Talls Ships America officials to tell them about the OpSail board’s vote.

“I’m going to let them know we’ve been unable to get the commitment from the state. If they have other options, we don’t want to hold them up,” he said.

Unaware of the latest developments, Kristin Von Wald, the Tall Ships America executive director, said in a phone interview Tuesday that she would have to hear from OpSail/New London representatives next week to have time to incorporate New London in the planning for next year’s event.

Von Wald said Tall Ships America has reached agreements with the state of Maine and certain Maine port cities, including Portland, and is waiting to hear from a number of other coastal locations in New England. She said a $300,000 contribution from Connecticut state government would be “a wonderful show of support.”

The amount of additional money that could be raised would determine “what kind of event it would be,” Von Wald said.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com