Events > April tools
APRIL TOOLS WOODEN BOAT CHALLENGE
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2025 Event Recap
April Tools 2025 was beautiful sunny day with a Tugboat Twist! Build any boat design you want using the materials provided, then get to the finish line without tangling your rope or losing your log load. 2025: Here's how it all went down... Our usual team rivals were out in full force this year, including Garden Bay Fireflies and Gunboat Bay Challengers. They both finished first in their heat, and were neck and neck in the final race! It was quite an uproarious finish, with Gunboat Bay Challengers almost overtaking the Fireflies in the final few metres of the course. Two steadfast teams, Beaver Island Bandits and Allen Crescent Wrenches, who both DNF'd in 2024 due to unfortunate tippy boat construction, returned in 2025 to take another run at the trophy. While Allen Crescent Wrenches made it around the course in good time, they didn't make the cut for the final race. Beaver Island Bandits, however, with a unique and definitely floaty boat design this year, took second place in heat 1, but they didn't finish in the top three in the final race. We also had a few new teams this year, including 3rd place winners "Cold Plungers", this year's only all-female team. They arrived from Vancouver slightly late for the Twist reveal (parking challenges!), and didn't seem to have much of an idea what the boatbuilding part of the event entailed. However, they made a very speedy and floaty boat, and made it through heat 2 and the final race with impressive speed and stability. Congratulations everyone, thank you everyone, and see you next year! 2025 RACE RESULTS
Adult Final Race
1st Place: (But barely!) Garden Bay Fireflies 2nd Place: (Almost 1st!) Gunboat Bay Challengers 3rd Place: (First timers!) Cold Plungers Youth Trophy Race 1st place: 3 M-I-C-S 2nd place: Lightning Sharks 3rd place: Hyperpigmentation Youth Fun Race Everybody won! Treats all around. Thank you to IGA and Oak Tree Market for providing the goodies to the youth teams! |
See You on Saturday, April 25, 2026! Thank you to our 2025 sponsors!
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Thank You, Jackie O!
We took few moments to recognize Jackie Ordronneau and her incredible contributions to our community and to the Pender Harbour Living Heritage Society.
Most of you here know Jackie as the extremely hardworking leader and organizer of the annual April Tools Wooden Boat Challenge event. But many of you may not know that Jackie has been running this event in our very lucky community for more than twenty years.
In fact, Jackie, Rick Crook, and Jackie’s late husband Richard Hascke were the founders of the Pender Harbour Living Heritage Society back in 2001, which was also the first year of the April Tools Wooden Boat Challenge. We the society, and all of you, wouldn't be here without the three of them, and especially without Jackie’s continued and unwavering determination to put this amazing event on for the community every year on the last Saturday in April.
An event like this doesn’t come together in a few days, as many of you who volunteer for local community groups know well. Every January, Jackie begins the year by sending out letters to sponsors to raise funds for the upcoming event. She also contacts past April Tools teams to remind them to register. Then she collects together a small group of volunteers to help with planning and organizing, and swears us all to complete secrecy about the boatbuilding twist. Jackie's days are then filled with various correspondences and planning meetings, ordering posters and t-shirts and building supplies and then collecting them all, making sure the high school kids’ teams are organized and have volunteers to help them build their boats in shop class, wrangling more volunteers for event day, organizing insurance, organizing prizes, and many many more necessary and often tedious tasks that need to be done to make sure this event runs smoothly every year. And then she makes batches and batches of the delicious cookies and snacks you might have been lucky enough to get your hands on earlier today.
Jackie, we don’t say it enough, but we truly appreciate all of the incredibly hard work you put into this event every year. You are a priceless treasure to all of us in this community, and we love you and are extremely grateful for all of the energy and enthusiasm you put into this magical event every year.
Please, everyone, give Jackie a huge round of applause and whenever you see her around town or in the grocery store, be sure to tell her: “Thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you do!”
Thank you, Jackie. You’re a superstar!
2025 April Tools Photo Gallery
April Tools 2025 Awards
April Tools 2025: Adult Races
2025 April Tools: Youth Races
2025 April Tools: Boatbuilding & Activities
