Closing yacht club donates funds to students

MOSES LAKE — The Moses Lake Yacht Club will be no more, after disbanding last month, but it leaves behind a history that will long linger in the memories of those who participated.

It was the Moses Lake Yacht Club that launched the Miss Moses Lake Pageant. They conducted national races on the lake, and the club owned an unlimited hydroplane that represented the community on the national stage.

The club’s final act will be community-minded. It will donate all of the money left in its bank account — $8,700 — to Big Bend Community College for its intervention scholarship program. That fund is used to help students who are facing a hardship finish a degree.

According to Treasurer Rich Engelmann, the Moses Lake Yacht Club officially ceased to exist on Jan. 9. On that date only nine couples remained as members. In its heyday, the club had more than 150 members.

Engelmann and his wife Pam, were one of the last couples. They had been members since 1992. Rich Engelmann was voted president three times.

“That’s a long time, 56 years of it,” Rich Engelmann said. “It was like every other club. People started doing other things and just lost interest. It’s a little sad, but it was time.”

One thing Engelmann will remember most is his participation in the lighted boat parade that was held on summer evenings. Numerous boats, artfully decorated with Christmas lights, participated. The community was notified of the date, and it seemed as if everyone turned out.

“That was my funnest thing,” Engelmann said. “As we cruised on the lake with our boats, we honked our horns and hooted and hollered, and everyone on the shore hooted and hollered back at us.”

The Moses Lake Yacht Club started in 1954 as the Moses Lake Boat Club. Few people had yachts then. First one member got one, and then another, and eventually the boat club changed into a yacht club.

The original members may have been a rowdy bunch and a fun-loving bunch, he said.

They formed the boat club to express their need for speed. It was their goal to race boats.

“The club needed trophy girls for the races,” Engelmann said. “So it started the Miss Moses Lake Pageant.”

The need for speed grew and the club acquired the old unlimited hydroplane named Slomoe. It joined the American Powerboat Association with the newly named Miss Moses Lake. It took third place in the national championship race at Las Vegas in 1958.

According to Engelmann, the Miss Moses Lake later went to its rest in Columbia Park, alongside the Columbia River, in Kennewick. It was there until it was replaced by a more modern hydroplane.

The Moses Lake Yacht Club sponsored its own National Outboard Motor Boat races from 1963-1974. Needing an officials’ barge for race judges and the like, it built one on pontoons.

After the races came to an end, the officials’ barge was upgraded, decorated, named the Party Barge and rented for on-the-lake celebrations. It was sold recently and the club’s gain is included in the donation to Big Bend.

The Moses Lake Yacht Club was not just about racing. For years it helped raise more than 100,000 trout a year to stock the Lake for the area’s fishermen. The state brought the baby fish in pens, and members of the club fed and otherwise took care of them.

“That was kind of hard in winter when the wind was blowing,” Engelmann said.

The Moses Lake Yacht Club also sponsored a “free” kids fishing derby. It stocked large horse troughs with thousands of fish, and hundreds of children participated.

“We wanted to show them how much fun it was to catch a fish. It was a hoot,” Engelmann said.