A multiday trip for two aboard a working Great Lakes freighter is once again being offered as a top prize for the National Museum of the Great Lakes’ fund-raising raffle.
“We are really excited to have it back” after a three-year hiatus prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, Kate Fineske, the Toledo museum’s executive director, said Wednesday afternoon.
Museum officials greatly appreciated that other businesses, including the American Queen cruise line that operates Great Lakes tours, stepped in to offer prize trips, Ms. Fineske said, during the years that freighter operator Interlake Steamship Co. put a hold on having visitors aboard its ships.
But a drop in revenue, she said, clearly demonstrated that the freighter trips, which aren’t available to the general public any other way, were the raffles’ big draw.
“We just know this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Ms. Fineske said.
This year’s second prize is also, at least for now, an exclusive opportunity to spend a night in the Benson Ford Shiphouse on South Bass Island while also visiting local attractions there.
While visitors may tour the ship’s pilothouse and cabins that were transplanted years ago to a rocky point on the island’s western shore, “it’s not currently open to overnight stays by purchase,” Ms. Fineske said before describing the prize visit as “a pretty unique and fun thing to do.”
Raffle tickets cost $100 apiece, or three for $250. A third prize in the drawing is 10 tickets to next year’s raffle.
Winners will be drawn Oct. 3, with tickets available to purchase through the day before. The museum has decided not to hold its H2Oh! fund-raising dinner this year, but the drawing will be livestreamed.
Cleveland-based Interlake historically has provided freighter trips as charitable gestures toward the Great Lakes Historical Society, which operates the local museum, and similar historic-preservation institutions. The grand prize does not name a specific vessel in the Interlake fleet that will host the winners, who officially will be guests of the company.
The grand-prize trip will not be a full week as in the past, but it will be “multiple nights,” Ms. Fineske said. Interlake will arrange a schedule with the winners depending on its freighters’ sailings, and will strive to return its passengers to the same port where they boarded. If that’s not possible, the company in past years has provided a van ride to complete the return.
Interlake freighters’ ports of call regularly include Monroe, Toledo, and Sandusky.
The second prize “Ultimate Put-in-Bay Experience” includes restaurant vouchers, ticket vouchers for four to the Put-in-Bay Tour Train, Perry’s Cave, the War of 18 Holes miniature golf course, Butterfly House, Heineman’s Winery and Crystal Cave Tours, Lake Erie Islands Nature and Wildlife Center, and round-trip transportation on the Jet Express ferry.
Tickets may be purchased through the National Museum of the Great Lakes website, nmgl.org .
Most Popular
Comments / 0