PORT ANGELES — The winner of the 26th annual Great Olympic Peninsula Duck Derby wasn’t on hand Sunday for the race at Lincoln Park, but more than 300 people showed up to cheer on 25,488 little rubber ducks.
Robbie McNamara of Bremerton was named grand-prize winner as one of his ducks entered the winner’s tube first, and he will receive his choice of a 2015 Toyota Tacoma pickup truck or a Toyota Corolla sedan, donated by Wilder Toyota.
McNamara was not immediately reached by telephone by race organizers Sunday afternoon.
Irwin Dental, winners of the $500 grand prize for the Bub and Alice Olsen Very Important Duck Race, donated their winnings back to the Olympic Medical Center Foundation, said Bruce Skinner, foundation executive director.
The duck pond at Lincoln Park was very low, Skinner noted, and the chute from the large dump truck that serves as the starting box for the ducks was long.
When the cannon sounded, the ducks slowly slid down the chute — except for one small duck that stubbornly clung to the very top of the truck’s plastic-lined bed.
Eventually it shook free and joined its fellows at the edge of the pond to the cheers of the crowd.
Firefighters from Port Angeles Fire Department sprayed water from fire hoses at the ducks, bouncing ducks in all directions, from the back of the pack into the front, and from the center to all sides.
The tiny ducks, each with a number on a small metal plate on their undersides, were pushed across the pond by the fire hoses until the ducks were funneled into a clear tube at the end.
Bill Rinehart, of Rinehart Consulting of Port Angeles, an accounting firm who oversees the system of determining the winning duck and keeping it secure, reached in for the first duck that appeared and put it in a clear plastic bag marked with a large No. 1.
“I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years,” Rinehart said.
The race is governed by the Washington State Gambling Commission, which routinely audits the group’s method of determining the winner.
The system worked smoothly Sunday, organizers said.
As Rinehart took the all-important grand-prize winner, a line of children, mostly from the Port Angeles High School wrestling team and their siblings, followed with bags to take the next ducks in line — 44 winning ducks in total.
Rinehart walked the No. 1 duck, still in the clear plastic bag, to a trailer where the booklets of duck sales tickets were kept.
There, Rinehart stood at the door of the trailer and read off the numbers on the bottom of the ducks, while a crew inside the trailer sought those numbers from the carefully ordered booklets, and the young volunteers lined up 75 ducks on the ground outside the trailer.
With a PDN reporter present, he carefully read the number on the duck: “8844642,” he said twice.
A volunteer handed Skinner the booklet holding the matching ticket with the name of the purchaser: McNamara.
At number 40, Rinehart discovered he had a “dead duck.”
A dead duck is a duck whose number has not been sold, Skinner explained.
All of the ducks are put into the truck jumbled, whether they are sold or not, so that last-minute sales have neither advantage nor disadvantage in placement in the truck, he said.
More ducks are numbered than there are prizes, he said, to allow for dead ducks.
Skinner said each year there are a hundred or more of the nearly 26,000 ducks that aren’t sold, and often there are one or two that show up in the winner’s group.
Those ducks are skipped, and the next duck in line moves up one.
When all 44 prize winners were identified, Skinner took the list to announce the winners on a stage set up for the event while Rinehart continued monitoring the paperwork inside the trailer.
Proceeds benefit the Olympic Medical Center Foundation and the Sequim Rotary Club’s charitable projects.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
