Salmon Derby Co-Chair Doug Larsen still remembers a small rowboat his dad gave him when he was 12 years old. It lasted him decades before he finally got rid of it a just last year.
At this year’s Golden North Salmon Derby, another Juneau youngster will earn a rowboat of his or her very own.
In this year’s Salmon Derby, one of the prizes will be a 10-foot rowboat that the Juneau-Douglas Woodworking class donated to the derby this summer. The top finisher in the youth category (aged 16 or younger) will win the boat, Larsen said.
JDHS teacher Collin Dukes’ CHOICE Boat Building class makes a rowboat every semester, according to the class website, and usually sells the boat to get the money back for material costs. This boat, however, the class decided to donate to the Salmon Derby.
“We’re pretty tickled that they thought to donate it to the Derby,” Larsen said earlier this week.
The 71st annual Salmon Derby runs from Aug. 11-13, and 71 contestants will win prizes for catching the largest salmon. The prizes, including the boat, will be distributed at 7 p.m. Aug. 17 at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall. The boat seems to be pretty durable, Larsen said, and has a chance to last for a long time if it’s properly stored and cared for.
Larsen was impressed by the quality of the boat, comparing it to the House Build program, run by JDHS teacher Andy Bullick, where high school students learn construction skills by actually building a house.
“Any time you take a group of high school kids and come up with a nice product like this,” Larsen said, “it’s kind of like the (House Build) program that Andy Bullick does, it’s pretty remarkable.”
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com.
