Scarab Anyone?
By Denise Janus
You HAVE to read this entry, even if you don’t read any others. I hope I do this awesome day's entry justice.
We hit the water at 9 a.m. (Dr. Vogt, Larry, Chris, Mike, Laura, and I)…
The sun was shining brightly, clouds were sparse…I forgot my sunglasses so the rays reflecting off the water made me squint which was irritating. I’m not gonna lie, canoeing was extra laborious.
We had paddled about 5.5 miles of our 8-mile and it was about 11:10 a.m. when we saw a bunch of boats in the distance, and we watched a Scarab powerboat chase another speedboat named “Mai Tai” back to shore. We were canoeing along when all of a sudden the rumbling 28-foot Scarab abandoned his chase of Mai Tai and started coming toward us on our starboard side. They circled around behind us pulled up along our portside. The guy on the boat yelled over, “I saw you in this morning’s paper, do you have time for lunch?!”
This bunch of heat-parched paddlers from Detroit was only too happy to acquiesce for lunch! So he pointed us toward a grey building on the beach and roared off ahead of us. I said to the team, “O.K. paddle fast; we gotta get there stat.”
We made it to the beach in record time and were greeted by the members of a fine establishment: the Beaver Park Yacht Club in Lorain, Ohio. They invited us in and served us all the free food, beverages and dessert we could eat. How great!! They had a bunch of copies of the morning paper and each of us autographed one so they could frame it and hang it up on their wall!
After lunch they presented us with their Yacht flag! Just when we thought things couldn’t get any better, and that the Beaver Park Yacht Club couldn’t show us any more love, Captain Ron asked if we wanted a ride on the Scarab.
“Well yeah we want to go!” We all went for a ride on the powerboat and had an absolute blast – I mean, we love to paddle but we also love to feel all that wind in our faces! Captain Ron drove us by the Lorain Lighthouse http://www.lorainportauthority.com/lighthouse/ which is where we were actually set to canoe to today! We were supposed to be done paddling today at about 12:30 p.m., but we had such a great time with the Beaver Park Yacht Club folks that we didn’t get back on our way until 3:30 p.m.!!!! I love the nautical lifestyle. The hospitality shown by the Beaver Park Yacht Club members really floored us all. They treated us so well. So after this random act of kindness and inviting slice of celebrity at the Beaver Park Yacht Club paradise, we set off for the Lorain Lighthouse, where Capt. Ron said he’d hook us up with a Lighthouse tour tomorrow.
True to Capt. Ron’s word, the Lorain Lighthouse Restoration Chairman, Mickey VanWagner, cruised up to us not 20 minutes after we were back on the water and told us to come to the lighthouse tomorrow for the tour! Wow what a day! We put in the rest of our miles, then went back to camp at the Inland Seas Maritime Museum stunned and exhausted – I guess it’s all in a day’s work – but this day won't easily be topped!