After a four-year gap, organizers will finally be able to fowl the waters again at Twin Lakes for the annual Juneau Duck Derby.<\/p>\n
Thousands of the rubber creatures will take flight – or, more accurately, be dropped from a helicopter — during the annual fundraiser<\/a> for the Glacier Valley Rotary Club scheduled Aug. 26. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the annual event, with the Rotary hosting a “duckless raffle”<\/a> in the interim, but this year’s event will return with the drop and other activities during the day.<\/p>\n First time in four years for being able to have a live drop,” said Eric Forst, president of the Glacier Valley Rotary Club. “They will be hoisted by, I believe, Coastal Helicopters up over the Twin Lakes and released into the lake.” <\/p>\n The ducks, tagged with numbers and freshly washed after their long period in storage, are scheduled to be released at 2 p.m. According to the official rules, “ducks will be allowed to ‘swim’ freely for a minimum of 30 minutes before winning ducks will be rescued from the water by an authorized representative.”<\/p>\n People can purchase ducks online at juneauduckderby.com, at the Douglas Breeze In or Gas N Go between 4-6 p.m. Aug. 23, Super Bear or Foodland IGA from 4-6 p.m. on Aug. 24, or at the Juneau Radio Center from 6:30-9 a.m. Aug. 25 — where purchasers will get a “donut for duck” exchange. Ducks can also be bought at the event that begins at 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. if available.<\/p>\n “Our goal is to sell 5,000 ducks,” Forst said. “We’re usually pretty close to that by the time we get to the actual event day.”<\/p>\n Other activities during the event include music, games and food, he said.<\/p>\n Setting up the raffle is a time-consuming process that took a bit of extra effort this year since the ducks were in storage so long, Forst said.<\/p>\n “We (normally) take them we take them out every year — we clean them, we label them, make sure they’re ready to go and they still float, and all that kind of stuff,” he said.<\/p>\n Participants can purchase one duck for $10 or purchase three ducks for $25 or 13 for $100. The grand prize is $5,000, second-place prize is $1,000 plus two round-trip tickets to anywhere Alaska Airlines travels, third place prize is $1,500, and there are other lesser cash prizes for the top 10 winners.<\/p>\n The funds raised go toward youth scholarships, projects such as park shelters and picnic tables, and other purposes, Forst said.<\/p>\n • Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thousands of flightless fowl make return, will be dropped by helicopter during annual Duck Derby. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":868,"featured_media":101963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[560,916],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-101962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-fundraiser","tag-rotary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/868"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101962"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=101962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}