Les Cheneaux
By Helen Shoberg 484-2626 mink1@cedarville.net

This is a short week for me this week because I am heading down to enjoy the Holland Tulip Festival. This is something I have not done since the days that I lived in my home town of Grand Rapids. Staying with an old high school friend, Joyce Plewes in Zeeland, will make it even more special.

I understand that the Les Cheneaux Links Golf Course is open and also the Hessel Ridge Golf Course on Three Mile Road. The weather has been perfect for a good game of golf and, good news for golfers, according to the weatherman, the weather will continue sunny for several days. Summer is coming!

Sandy Wells has arrived to open their cottage on Islington Point. Annabelle will follow in a couple of weeks. Judy and Jim Martin have also arrived for the summer.

A note from Mary Flood, who with her husband, Tom, resides on Island Number 8 during the summer months, tells of the coming 100th birthday celebration of her mother, who resides at the American House Residence in Roseville in her own apartment. There will be a party for family and friends on Saturday, May 12, with upward of 73 guests from all over Michigan, plus California, Iowa, Florida, and Louisiana. We certainly wish her a very special birthday. One hundred years is quite a milestone.

Another note, this one from reader Kevin Stark from Custer, tells of the days he stayed in Cedarville at Larry's Cottages and enjoyed good fishing. He has heard that the fishing has improved and is interested in a return visit, and isn't it nice that this is happening once again? Larry subscribes to The St. Ignace News and was excited to see our boys win the state basketball championship.

As we watch with interest the rising of the new boat building school on Meridian Road, we have an article from Bruce Patrick about Dave Janz, who will be one of the main figures in this new Cedarville enterprise. The story from Bruce follows:

"This is how Dave Janz and I built a Mackinaw boat like the one that was pictured in the Weekly Wave in 2006. Dave got the line dimensions from Oliver Birge, who got them off the Wa-Ba-Se, a Mackinaw that belonged to the Osogwins of Hessel. The Wa-Ba-Se was used for years. This hull was built by Cheginec of St. Ignace many years ago - how many, I don't know.

"Dave and I went into the woods near Nunn's Creek and bought cracked cedar trees that a lumberman failed to cut because cracks in them were too big. He did not know how many of the planks on a Mackinaw boat look like a quarter moon shape.

"We hauled them to my sawmill and sawed them to our order. I did not help much in building the actual boat, but Dave worked hard on it and got it built. He went into the woods and got the spar, a spruce tree. He sewed sails by hand and sailed this Mackinaw boat for one summer or so, then he donated it to the Les Cheneaux Historical Association, where it sits today at the Maritime Museum for all to inspect."

Fawn Moeller won the Lions Club $100 lottery May 1.