| | Published November 23rd, 2011
| Orinda Couple Wins Rotary Raffle Canoe
| | Submitted by Thomas Black |  | | From left: John Fazel, Janet and Norm Pease Photo Thomas Black
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The winners of a custom-made, handcrafted wood canoe raffled by Lamorinda Sunrise Rotary Club are Norm and Janet Pease, longtime residents of Orinda. Their winning ticket was drawn after the recent Lafayette Reservoir Run, in which Norm was an entrant, by Jay Lifson, Executive Director of the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the Run.
Gross revenue from the raffle -- $20 per ticket, six for $100 -- totaled $17,310. The winner had the choice of accepting the canoe or $2,000 cash. The Peases opted for the canoe, the commercial value of which is estimated at between $8,000 and $10,000. Proceeds will be used by the club to fund a variety of community-service projects, including partial underwriting of the new outdoor concert stage under construction at Lafayette Reservoir.
Tippy, as dubbed by the club, will make the trek next spring to the Peases' summer home at Elk Lake, near Bend, Oregon. Meantime, it will "hibernate" in a hangar at Buchanan Field in Concord, where a private airplane owned and flown by Pease is stored.
The canoe was built from scratch by a dozen worker-bee Rotarians in the private woodshop of Gary Fulcher, a club member and resident of Orinda. In addition to acting as official project supervisor, Fulcher put in untold hands-on hours himself. It is estimated that some 1,500 man-hours were invested over a period of eight labor-intensive months, beginning last January.
The 15-foot canoe-literally one of a kind-was hand-built stem to stern, including the two caned seats. The outer top and bottom are "woven" from hundreds of lengths of African rosewood veneer. Other materials comprising the laminate hull are Kevlar, fiberglass and resins. The topmost layer is a professionally- applied thick clearcoat of high-gloss varnish.
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA