Tag: Cardboard Canoe

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Racing

Today was the Medford Cardboard Canoe races. There were 12 teams entered, and some really nice looking boats. A professor from UMass Lowell had a sleek looking canoe, while a group of younger kids had a small maneuverable hot dog boat. Our two boats looked very good among the competitors, and our students were happy to talk to admirers about the work they had done. Our green boat, unfortunately, had some issues during its first race. These issues mainly arose due to an uneven paddling strategy from the team that led to them tipping over. Tough to recover from that, and the boat was damaged. Our senior boat looked solid and won 2 of its 3 races, although it was on its last legs in the final race. The senior team came in second place, and it was a fun event for everybody. I think we learned a few ways to improve the boats for next year, and hopefully we will again have multiple teams competing.

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Boats Are Ready

The final push to get the boats ready happened this Friday. Students put on some finishing design touches, and both boats look great. They are going to be very competitive I feel, so hopefully one of the two teams will come out victorious. Looking forward to Sunday.

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The Ant

During the building of the canoe boats, there were apparently some ant explorers that made their way onto the cardboard during the gluing process. Unfortunately, for a few of the ants, the messy gluing technique created slow moving streams of glue that caught these ants unaware, and encased them forever in a sea of Elmers. The students, feeling bad about the situation, decided to commemorate these unlucky souls by creating a large cardboard ant that will be placed at the head of the boat during the races. The last few weeks of school can be a strange. A few photos below.

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Boat Construction

Cardboard boat construction continues here in the shop, although it looks as though my seniors will not finish their boat during this week, which is actually their last week of school. We have welcomed them to come back anytime to finish up their boats, which we hope they do. The Junior boat is coming together very well, with just one more exterior skin piece to place before they can begin working on the interior. There is still a lot of work to be done to seal the boat, but they still have about 3 weeks to go until the competition. A few progress photos of the boats.

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Cardboard Canoes

It has been 4 years since we last competed in the Cardboard Canoe races, and while we had a very sturdy boat, it was almost too sturdy. It tipped over too easy because if floated so well and was not easy for our students to control. Those freshmen who built the canoe are now seniors and are working on a new boat for this years races. Our shop has 2 entrants a senior team and a junior team. It’s exciting to see their work, and to see how far our shop has come in providing our students with the tools to make these incredible objects. A few photos below of the construction process. The event is June 12th, and I will post more info as we approach the date.