PORT ANGELES — Margy Hall is a bit beyond the “Sesame Street” set, but you might hear her singing Muppet Ernie’s signature song today:
“Rubber Ducky, you’re the one . . . Rubber Ducky, I’m awfully fond of you.”
Hall, owner of Fifth Avenue Furniture in Sequim won the 2005 Great Olympic Peninsula Duck Derby on Sunday, getting a new Toyota Tacoma pickup truck.
She can use it. Hall said her current car — with which she commutes from her home in Bremerton — has 232,000 miles on it.
“I can’t believe this,” she said. “I never win anything.”
In all, 63 other people from places ranging from Neah Bay to Escondido, Calif., won prizes ranging from free meals to resort weekends, and topped by Hall’s truck from Wilder Toyota.
Only a handful of them were among the 200-plus people who lined the Nippon Paper Industries USA canal to watch a dumptruck-load of yellow ducks float to a finish line.
Duck sellers sold 31,789 ducks — 2.88 tons of them — easily breaking last year’s record of 28,435.
$140,000 raised
The ducks, which cost $5 apiece or five for $20, raised about $140,000, said Bruce Skinner, director of the Olympic Medical Center Foundation.
The hospital foundation and the Sequim Rotary Club will receive more than $110,000 from the event.
On Sunday, the ducks formed a huge yellow mat riding the incoming tide in the canal. An inflatable boom narrowed the leaders into a chute where they were plucked one by one from the water and placed in numbered bags.
The “race” was over in about 10 minutes, and winners were announced about a half-hour later.
It was the 16th edition of the fund-raiser and the 16th time the grand prize has been a vehicle donated by Wilder Toyota.
