What a blast! The 2022 Bago Barge & Beach Bash was a success! So many people to thank for their help with this year's event. My crew did an outstanding job setting up and preparing the barge for launch and helped to tear it down and get us back before the storms came in. The Hefter's for supporting this event and working to get our amazing sponsors. This year's sponsors were Mercury Racing, 5G Benefits, Muthig Industries, Wrightway Builders, Holiday Automotive, 95.1 Radio. We should all be appreciative of the companies that make it possible to have these parties on the water and provide us with some great options for live entertainment. Andrea from Mercury Racing came to watch the show and support the event. It is a pleasure to have our sponsors come out and see the impact that they give to our boating community.
This year we had the super talented Sam Guyton come back with his father Marcell and the Rythm Kings band. Watching and listening to them was so much fun. They got the crowd pumped up from start to finish. This father and son pair are a joy to be around. It's super cool how they share the love. Marcell had on a white t-shirt with I Love You Dad written on the front of the shirt. He told us later that it was a shirt Sam made for him over 20 years ago. I thought that was really cool! It was an all-around great day. I ran into so many people that were just having a blast and told me how happy they were to have an event like this. It's always nice to receive feedback like that.
We got very lucky with the weather! It was a beautiful day during the entire show. On the way back we were a little ways from the Yacht Club when it started to rain. By the time we got the barge and pontoon up on the trailer. It was a downpour with crazy winds. The crew got soaked but didn't miss a beat. Everything got loaded and we pulled out and got home all in one piece. Overall it was an amazing day, filled with awesome people and fantastic music. Thanks to everyone that came out! Our sponsors, support team and I hope you had a fun and memorable day out on the water!
I have some sample photos below and over 300 photos on the Wiparty Photo Gallery for you to check out and download or purchase. I also have put together a video with some small video clips as well as the photo slideshow included. If you are looking for things to do every week check out WiParty.com
Bago Barge & Beach Bash - Photo Gallery Slide Show
Bago Barge & Beach Bash Videos with Photo Slide Show.
Brunch of Drag show at Calavera's & Boating Lake Winnebago
Brunch of Drag Show at Calavera's Downtown Appleton
See all of the photos Well for Sunday Fun day this week. We stepped things up a little and went to the Brunch of Drag show at Calavera's Fine Fusions in downtown Appleton. We had some very cool drinks including a Maple Bacon Bourbon Old Fashion, Mimosa's, Bloody's, and the Cazuela. A citrusy drink served in a clay bowl. All of their drinks really are unique and push your brain into figuring out what your taste buds are trying to tell you. The drag show was a group of 3 performers including Sasha Monroe that came out and entertained the crowd. The show included mimosa's a very nicely done brunch with sandwiches, charcuterie, bagels, jams, cheese, yogurt, fruit, and some chocolate caramels. This bar has a cool vibe that is fun and creative as well as a great sound system and a friendly staff. If you are looking to change things up take some time out and give Calavera's a try. After the show, we switched gears and grabbed the kids and your group of friends, and headed on the pontoon bar to hit lake Winnebago and hang out in front of Waverly Beach. It was a great day out and the lake was calm. We stopped up to the bar and grabbed a few drinks and ran into more friends. I have to admit the service seems to be lacking at Waverly as well as the food is nothing to brag about. We still love the location. I really hope they can get things put back together. We headed home and stopped at The Old Grog in Menasha for a very good $8 - 4 piece chicken diner. This place is a lot of fun and worth your time to stop in and check out.
I hope you enjoy the photos! See all the photos - Photo Gallery
I got up in the morning to the sound of rain hitting the roof, but stayed positive and was hoping for some sun. I rounded up the tools and then my buddy swung over and off we went, right into a fantastic rainstorm that stuck with us all the way down to Fond du lac. We were lucky enough to have been able to drop off the barge the night before at the Fond du lac Yacht club. They were kind enough to help us out with launching and giving us room for the barge and a trail boat. We got the boat down to the launch and one of the gentlemen from the Yacht Club had about an 18ft Whaler to help us pull the old barge out to the park. My friends Brett and Neal were also along and waiting for us out in the bay with Brett's RIB boat that he uses for his business – Oshkosh Dock and Lift. They helped us pull out the second barge.
As we made it out to Roosevelt Park we were lucky enough to have Brett, Neal, and 6 guys from the Navy Club to help us to start setting up. We got the new front deck set up, and the main floor put on the new steel frame drum riser made up by Manowske Welding. Thank goodness we had people to get that bad boy up. Pushing 170 lbs over your head in the water gets interesting fast. As we were getting the floorboards and decking on the drum stage our first performer for the day, Mr. Pat Pederson, showed up. Brett and Neal took the RIB boat over and loaded up speakers, equipment, and Pat out to the barge. Pat set up his speaker system, we hooked up the generator and the show got started for the day. Not too many boats at this point. We believe the weather scared a lot of people away.
We set Pat on the new front stage so we would be able to get Generation Z's equipment on while Pat was playing. At this point, the weather was actually pretty nice. Just a little overcast and the rain was gone. Within an hour I got a call from Trevor Wolf that he was ready to bring out his sound system for Generation Z. We decided to try and take the second barge over to speed things up which worked out very well. We got all the sound equipment on and brought it over to start the process. Trevor, and Matt from Making Memories Entertainment, and Kathy Wolf and Sons, set up the speakers and dialed in the sound for Sam Guyton and Generation Z.
Pat gave us a hell of a great performance! He was funny as usual which made the 2-hour playtime go extremely fast. The guys from Generation Z showed up and we pulled them over to the Barge and they got the show rocking. These guys put on one hell of a great show. Always entertaining through their entire show. They sounded fantastic and the sound system was strong. The sound mixing master, Trevor Wolf, tuned things in super tight. It truly is amazing how he can make adjustments to the soundboard and get the sound perfect. Gen Z played for about 3 hours and we wished we could have kept them longer.
But we still had one more act to come out and tear things up. Cheese Stick Thunder gave me a call and said they were ready to come out. We did the switch out with the bands and unfortunately, we had to take down speakers to do a full set change. This took about an hour of work to get things ready. We lost some of our crowd but still had a great audience that was waiting for the Thunder to play. They did a great set for about two and a half hours which took past our 7 pm shut down and closer to 8 pm. Overall the day turned out to be fantastic! I believe at least around here we are the first barge party to have a 3 band show on the water, and all the work that we did on the barge was well worth the blood, sweat, and tears.
We started tearing down and Jeff took the 2nd barge back to the yacht club for us. Unfortunately for tear down, it was Casey, my daughter, Eva, our friend MaKenzie, and myself. Tear down started off pretty good until we had to pull out the big augers. I had the shaft snap and the pipe came out but the 12” auger was still stuck in the sand. After about 30 minutes of foot digging and prying with a piece of conduit, I got it out. It was not a fun job in the dark. We tied up to Brett's RIB boat and got the barge back to the launch. Everything went pretty well for doing it in the dark. We got back home at around 1 am. Thank goodness we were able to leave the boats overnight. Not sure we would have made it otherwise. The next morning we went down and cleaned up, strapped everything down, and got the boats back after about 3 hours. It is a lot of work and we did many great updates this year including the 2 additional stages and new dual axles. But it sure was a lot of fun! We really hope you all had a blast! Thanks again to all of our sponsors! If it was not for them we would have never been able to pull this off. So please take out some time and show them some love. Our core sponsor was 5G Benefits. They really stepped up with a donation as well as providing insurance for the event. Kathy Wolf and Sons, T&J Homes, and Making Memories Entertainment sponsored Gen Z and brought in the amazing sound system, Slim and Chubby's Bar brought you Cheese Stick Thunder, Manowske Welding helped us by welding up our new front stage as well as our new drum riser, and Sunny 97.7 helped advertise. The Fond du lac Navy Club and American Legion were on the shoreline and coming through by the boats selling brats, burgers, and dogs. My understanding is they did well on sales. Thank you all for supporting our local veterans. I also want to thank Jeff Hefter. He is the man behind getting us to come down to Fond du lac and helping to get our sponsors. We have a number of photos for you as well as a video for you to see what happened. Again thank you to our sponsors and to everyone that help support this event! We hope you enjoyed the bands and had a fun day on the water! See the over 700 photos on our - Photo Gallery
2021 Lake Winnebago Four Horsemen
Lake Winnebago Four Horsemen Poker Run - 2021
See the over 500 plus photos -Photo Gallery - 2021 Lake Winnebago Four Horsemen Poker Run this year got some great weather. A last minute change of plans allowed me to get out and get some photos this year. I was lucky enough to get on my friends Scot's 38 Excalibur he had a few people on but made room for me! I grabbed up some watery Michelob Ultras a bottle of Captain, bag of Doritos and some sun screen! Ran down to the front of the City Center were Scot had a great parking spot right across from Dockside Tavern in Oshkosh. We hung around for about one hour before the run got started. We got to see the chopper come in and land and enjoy the view of few of the poker runners boats coming into the docks. We found out later they had around 60 boats at this years events. We took off and headed up the river to try to make it to the first card stop out on Lake Poygan. We almost made it to the car boat still going about 45mph when we had Donnie's Outerlimits SL 52 passed us by like we were standing still. Guessing in the 120+ range. Quick enough for me not to even get my camera up and get a shot. A few minutes later we started getting the rest of the pack coming through. It always amazes me how impressive these beautiful machines really are. So we hung out until the last few boats were coming towards us and we headed back. We ran to Striech's Beach to hang out have a few cocktails and wait for the run to come by the last card boat. Ran into a bunch of old friends and really enjoyed being back at Striech's. We got some fairly good photos and headed back to the hotel. We tried to get some food but didn't have much luck at the hotel. So We headed over to Dockside. They had a couple of super hot boats for sale in the parking lot for sale. Walked up to the bar and ran into a ton of awesome friends. All in All a great day on the water with some amazing boats and amazing people! I hope you enjoy the photos! Make sure to check out these great article's about the run from Speed on the Water! See all the photos - Photo Gallery
July 4th Dustin Lee on the Barge
See all the photos on our PHOTO GALLERY. July 4th was a blast. We started in Oshkosh and took a run up the river to see Dustin Lee on the barge. It was a great run up the river and the weather was perfect. We made it to Partridge Lake and you could see the pile of boats. It is always funny coming into the sandbar in Fremont. Very few people seem to tie up to each other. So, boats are scattered all over the place. With no organization at all. We came in and found a huge area of wide open space in the middle. We were look for Dustin but could not find him. About one hour later. Dustin showed up on a pontoon boat and started setting up. The crowd kept building and Dustin kicked it into gear. The crowd quickly built up around the pontoon. As usual Dustin did a great job. I had to admit we were a little worried about covid and avoided going into the crowd up by the pontoon. But it was still allot of fun. We only had one weird moment. A guy was walking around with a bottle to share and asked if everyone wanted to take a pull of the bottle. I wasn't sure what to even say. Pass, pass, pass! It was a great day on the water and always fun to see live music on the boat!! Thanks Dustin Lee!! See all the photos on our PHOTO GALLERY.
Boating Lake Winnebago July 2nd 2020
It was one hot day and a great day to be out on the boat. We jumped on with our birthday boy friend Chris on his 27ft Powerquest. We meet up at Pioneer marina in Oshkosh and loaded up the boat with coolers and bags of goodies. A qucik smooth ride over to Streich's Beach. When we pulled in there was about 30 to 40 boats. The water looked fairly clear at first. But once in the water we found out the algea bloom has begun. It wasn't bad but not great. With in a few hours of relaxing and enjoying each other company. We had a few more boating friends come in and tie up. Overall it was a great day on the water with good friends, food and weather. See all the photos on our PHOTO GALLERY.
See all the photos on our PHOTO GALLERY. After a fun night at registration I woke up to a chilly but sunny morning! I had all my batteries and cameras packed and ready to go see my Four Horsemen family. My friend Casey offered to be the photo boat this year allowing me to stop and shoot rather than trying to shoot a 100 mph boat while going 70 mph in the back seat. I packed up some drinks and went to the breakfast meeting. The breakfast was set up in to-go containers to keep people safe with the given circumstances. Dockside Tavern did a great job: Eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles and they all were good. My wife Shannon started the meeting with a moment of silent for Jon Bahr by lighting a candle next to the flowers and memorial set up for him. He was the chopper pilot we tragically lost 3 years ago. There is also a memoriam logo on all the Horsemen t-shirts for Jon. The meeting highlighted safety and the route that would be taken this year. The course started with a flag drop just west of the 41 bridge, heading to the west side of Lake Poygan, back to Waverly Beach, Harbor Bar, and a short run to Striechs. We jumped in the boat and did a few drive bys, getting some nice photos of the boats getting ready to go. We headed the river and stopped just before Fratello's in the slow no wake and grabbed some nice photos. We did wait a little too long - by the time we got to the bridge the flag had dropped and all we could see were rooster tails flying. We went out to the first corner of the bend on Lake Butte des Mortes and decided to wait for the big boys to come back through. We didn't have to wait too long; in about 25 min Vinnie and Matt came roaring back through. It is always so fun to see boats of this caliber running wide open. We hung out for a little while here for what we thought was about 80% of the group to come through. Our spot wasn't really that good we were a little too far out from the action. We headed back up the river and got ready to run over to Harbor Bar hoping to get ahead of the lead boats by skipping Waverly Beach. We were wrong on that! By the time we got up the river and to the train bridge I text my little lady and asked where she was. She was just tying up and Harbor Bar. Well damn! I told Casey it's time to punch it and get over to Harbor. The 27ft Sunsation did a pretty good job. We cut across Lake Winnebago with about a 2' chop. By the time we got across the lake it felt like I was spanked about 50 times. But we sure had fun. We finally rolled into the Calumet County Marina. What a site! All these beautiful boats and people all over the place. The community support and onlookers this year was impressive. Everywhere we went on the run people were out and watching. It was very nice to see. At the marina there were people out on blankets on both sides of the hill; everyone from kids to the elderly having fun and enjoying the event. We got tied up and went up on the hill to get some photos, then we headed up to Harbor Bar for the Horsemen lunch. They had a nice spread of coconut shrimp, mushrooms, chicken wings, and crab rangoons. Everyone seemed happy and Harbor Bar did a good job of keeping up with the crowd of people. We ate quickly and got back to the boat to get some more photos. We got out early but still not first out as we had a couple boats tied up to the Sunsation, so we missed a few of the big boys again. Once we got out on the water, we planted our butts in a central location and waited for the boats to come out. We got some nice shots in this spot. We decided again to take off to Streich's. First 1/2 mile was not bad, then we got into about 3' waves and again got our asses spanked and decided we should just head back. We took a peek at Striech's and no one was there anyway with the number of waves we had. Casey and I were both happy to see the train bridge and our butt whipping to be over. Going up the river we ran into Jason rocking out with a group of guys on a tritoon heading to Streich's. Jason is our friend who makes this event happen. He is also the proud owner of the Legendary boat Gold Digger. Unfortunately, they had a prop issue on Butte des Mortes and had to bring it back in. It was heartbreaking for me to see as they have done a ton of work on this beautiful boat and it shows. It really is an impressive boat to see running across the water. I give Jason a ton of credit. He didn't let it the prop get him or his friends down. He got the boat back and turned right around, grabbed a pontoon, put his crew on and headed back out to enjoy the day. Talking to him later he said it was not a big deal and the boat was fine. I have to admit I was very happy to hear that news. Jason has had some bad luck during this event but always keeps his chin up and gets ready for the next one. I got to go around and get some shots of everyone talking about the day and how things went for them. This is where the event shines! All these people from all over and all different sizes of boats having a blast talking about what happened during the day, making new friends and enjoying old ones as well. The card draw was held under Vinnie Diorio's amazing race boat trailer. Additional hands were available to buy to help support the Christine Ann Center charity. This great crew of boaters did not disappoint. They bought a ton of additional hands. After the card draw was under wraps the Rising Phoenix Band hit the stage and the party kicked into gear. About 9p the winners with the best hand were announced. This year's winners got a big check and some amazing Horsemen trophies. The first and second place winners donated the winning back to the Christine Ann Center. That's $5000 for the charity alone! How can you not be proud to be part of this event and the amazing people that come to attend as well as make it happen? I hope you enjoy the photos! Put this event on your list of must attend or at least stop in to see. Thank you, Four Horsemen Family! See all the over 1300 photos on our PHOTO GALLERY.
See over 1300 photos on our Photo Gallery Below:
2020 Lake Winnebago Four Horsemen Poker Run - Full Gallery
2020 Lake Winnebago Four Horsemen Poker Run Friday Kick Off
See all the photos on our PHOTO GALLERY. This past Friday night was the kick off to the 11th Annual Four Horsemen Poker Run on Lake Winnebago benefiting Christine Anne Center. It was a little chilly but a great day. It's a lot like a family reunion with this poker run as friends from a number of states come in that we only get to see once a year. With our Covid-19 situation it made it really hard not to hug everyone and practice social distancing. Registration included a temperature test to make sure everyone was good and healthy. Much to our delight we didn't have anyone with a high temperature. Masks were offered to anyone that wanted one. The event this year was held outside in the parking lot which was a nice change. This seemed to be the year for sport chassis as you can see in the pictures and we had a plethora of them to check out. There were also a number of hot cars to see: AMG Mercedes, Viper, and an Alfa Remeo. But the show stoppers as usual were the high-performance boats. I tell people every time I see them, they need to stop down and check this event out. These boats are amazing! Some of the hottest boats in the world and you can get right up next to them and check them out. The tiki bar and parking lot was busy all night with entertainment from DJ G spot. It is an honor to be part of this event, to take photos and to capture and share the fun. This event does take many hands to make come to life. I appreciate all of the hard work and dedication it takes. Special thanks to Jason, Shannon, Gary, Jeff, Brian, Makenzie, Jenna, Casey and a full list of other people that make this event what it is as well as the amazing sponsors. Without this long list of hard workers and support this wonderful event would not happen. Enjoy the photos and if you get a chance congratulate anyone you know involved in it! See all the photos on our PHOTO GALLERY.
2020 Lake Winnebago Four Horsemen Poker Run - Full Gallery
2005 Boating Photos are Complete
I have added the last of the 2005 boating photos to the Photo Gallery. Make sure to check out all 14 boating photo albums for the 2005 boating season. I know there were a lot of great photos and memories I enjoyed this year.
We are getting closer to hot sunny weekends. Hopefully, we will see you all out and on the water soon!
September 2005 Boating Season on Lake Winnebago. See all the photos at Wiparty.com
Social distance boating the new norm
Social distance boating the new norm. I am sure many of you have been itching to get on the boats, just like every year! But with the Covid 19 and the stay at home order, I think it is 10 times worse. We went out this last Saturday and it was very interesting. Everyone has the same thing on their minds and rightfully so: Stay 6 feet away and keep cleaning your hands and everything you touch. That is one good thing I guess with the boating world - it really can be your own space. Jump in the boat with your home crew and get a mental break if only for a little while. It was a very welcome change of scenery. We brought out a bunch of good food and some drinks. Made a little run to Streich's. It was great to see old friends even at a distance. It really helps to take the mental edge off. I am not going to condone going out. My belief is to use your common sense, keep your distance, keep cleaning everything including washing/sanitizing your hands. Use a zoom lens to take photos. Reality is we should be trying to clean and sanitize all the time. Again just my opinion. I am sure some of you will be mad that we went at all. I understand and respect your opinions. I do not take this virus lightly at all and feel horrible for the loss of life and for all the front line workers. My hats off to all of you. I hope you enjoy the photos. See Photo Gallery for more photos.