Moses Lake Just Ran Its Boats Two Different Ways, One Week Apart, and That Tells You Something

On Saturday morning, the air over Connelly Park carried the specific rasp of a flathead engine opening up across flat water, the kind of sound that still makes people walking dogs along the shoreline stop and turn around. That was the Northwest Powerboat Association's Vintage Hydroplanes Test and Tune, and it ran through Sunday. By next weekend, the sound at the other end of the lake will be completely different: oars slapping water, a crowd laughing at a boat built from duct tape and pool noodles, and the Seven C's Pirate Band tuning up on a winery lawn.

Both of these are boat races. Neither of them looks anything like the other. And the fact that Moses Lake hosts both, on the same body of water, a week apart, says more about how this town actually treats its lake than any single event could on its own.

What Happened at Connelly Park This Weekend

The NWPBA event ran Friday through Sunday at Connelly Park, the shoreline spot most longtime residents still call Airman's Beach out of habit. Admission to watch was free, with pit passes available for anyone who wanted a closer look at the boats between runs. The lineup was a mix of big and small vintage hydroplanes, plus a car show and food trucks parked along the grass.

The important word in the event's name is "tune," not "race." This was not a sanctioned competition with a scoreboard. It was vintage hydroplanes, some of them decades old, running the course at speed simply because that is what they are built to do and because a crowd showed up to watch them do it. No times posted, no trophies handed out, just engines from the golden age of Pacific Northwest hydroplane racing getting exercised on a lake that has hosted this exact kind of event for years.

That distinction matters if you are trying to understand Moses Lake's relationship to competitive boating, because the town also hosts the real thing. Cascade Park is where the American Power Boat Association has staged its Championship Nationals in past summers, sanctioned racing with actual scoring and a podium. The APBA's 2026 schedule also lists a separate sanctioned Pro-Mod-SO event on Moses Lake in mid-August, so the lake is drawing formal competition on top of whatever the vintage crowd is doing at Connelly Park. Same water, two very different rulebooks.

A Lake Built for Boat People

If you only paid attention to swim beaches and fishing reports, you would miss how much of Moses Lake's summer calendar actually revolves around boats moving fast on purpose. The Seattle Outboard Association reserved the city campground here for five straight days in mid-August this year for its summer boat races, an entire club relocating to this stretch of shoreline because the course works for their format.

Put those events next to each other, the Seattle Outboard Association's multi-day stay, the APBA's sanctioned Pro-Mod-SO race, and the NWPBA's vintage weekend, and a picture forms that a lot of visitors never see. This is not a lake that happens to have some boat racing on the calendar. In the span of a single summer, three separate regional powerboat organizations chose this specific lake for their events.

The Regatta That Doesn't Need an Engine

A week after the vintage hydroplanes clear out of Connelly Park, the mood flips entirely. On Sunday, September 6, Camas Cove Cellars hosts the 10th Annual Pirates of Camas Cove Regatta, and the rules alone tell you this is a different kind of boat event.

Every vessel has to be human-powered. Oars or pedals are fine. Motors are not. Swimming your boat across the finish line does not count, unless your boat happens to be sinking, in which case the rulebook allows for that possibility with a straight face. Builders are encouraged to work with whatever they have on hand, old surfboards, milk jugs, duct tape, cardboard, as long as nothing toxic goes into the lake.

The event gives out awards for more than just speed. Past prize categories have included best pirate vessel design from bow to stern, most courageous crew, and the Titanic award for the most unseaworthy boat in the fleet, a category that exists specifically to celebrate the entries that do not make it. Boats can be dropped off the day before for last-minute repairs at the Camas Cove Cellars dock, and the race itself is followed by an awards ceremony with the Seven C's Pirate Band playing the rest of the afternoon. Entry is free. Wine, cider, and snacks are available in the tasting room for anyone not actively bailing water out of a homemade pirate ship.

Ten years of the same regatta returning to the same dock is its own kind of evidence. This is not a novelty a winery tried once. It is a Labor Day weekend fixture that people plan their boat-building around months in advance.

Two Boats, Two Ways of Using the Same Water

Here is the part that is easy to miss if you only catch one of these events and assume it represents the whole town. The vintage hydroplane crowd at Connelly Park and the pirate-boat crowd at Camas Cove Cellars are not really competing for the same audience, and that is the point. One weekend is about precision engines built decades ago still running true. The next is about whether a boat made of pool noodles and cardboard will survive contact with open water long enough to cross a finish line.

A lake that can host both, within the same week, without either one feeling like an afterthought, is a lake that has room for more than one kind of relationship with the water. Some residents come to Moses Lake for the racing pedigree, the same shoreline that has drawn APBA sanctioned events and NWPBA vintage runs for years. Others come for exactly the opposite: an afternoon where the stakes are a homemade trophy and a pirate band, and the whole point is that nobody involved takes it too seriously.

That range is worth noticing if you already live here and only ever make it to one of these events. The version of Moses Lake you experience on a Saturday morning at Connelly Park is not the same town you experience on Labor Day weekend at Camas Cove Cellars, even though it is the same water underneath both.

If You're Planning Your Weekend Around This

A few practical notes for anyone weighing which event to catch, or whether to build a boat of your own before September 6:

• Connelly Park sits at 6671 McConihe Rd NE, and while this year's Test and Tune has already wrapped, NWPBA events tend to return to the same spot, so it is worth watching the Moses Lake Chamber calendar for the next one.
• The Pirates of Camas Cove Regatta runs Sunday, September 6, with the race itself starting in the afternoon at Camas Cove Cellars. Boat drop-off happens the day before for anyone who wants dock access to make final adjustments.
• Entry to race is free, but the tasting room requires the usual purchase for wine, cider, or snacks if you want to make an afternoon of it.
• If you are building a boat, remember the two rules that actually get enforced: human power only, and a Coast Guard approved flotation device for every crew member, no exceptions.

None of this requires owning waterfront property or even a boat trailer. It requires showing up at the right dock on the right weekend, which is arguably the easiest kind of local knowledge to pick up once you know where to look.

Moses Lake rewards the kind of attention that notices both ends of a spectrum like this, the sanctioned speed and the homemade chaos, and understands that a town's real character often lives in the gap between them. If you are the kind of person who wants that level of texture on the neighborhoods you are looking at, not just the median price but the actual rhythm of a place, that is exactly the kind of local read Medie Ruiz has spent two decades building here.

Let's Connect if you want a broker who already knows which dock to stand on for either event.