2011 Boat Building Competition
2011-05-01 02:46:20.239862+00 by
Dan Lyke
5 comments
With me paddling, my team took First Place in the race portion, and Best Craftsmanship, in today's running of this year's Bodega Bay Boat Building Competition. Pictures at http://www.flutterby.net/2011-04-30_Boat_Race
Since this was the first year our team competed, I expected that we'd finish. I did not expect to sweep the field. I am, however, now thinking about ways to win in some of the other categories. The crowd favorite went to a really cool paddlewheel boat, and the Titanic award seems to go to the most spectacular sinking. Trying to win that could be a real challenge...
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comments in descending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2011-05-02 04:55:27.549917+00 by:
Dan Lyke
More pictures with commentary: http://www.flutterby.net/2011-05-01_More_Boat_Building
#Comment Re: made: 2011-05-01 22:25:06.238606+00 by:
Dan Lyke
Yeah. Provided were 12 1x2s, 2 2x2s, 2 sheets of 3/8" ply, 3 tubes of cheap caulk, a roll of ductape, rope, a sheet of 6 mil plastic, and a bag of deck screws and a bag of nails. Hand tools except for battery powered drill/drivers (though the guys next to us had a battery powered angle grinder thing going, rules were selectively enforced in a way that I'm actually fine with).
We actually aced the race part of it so hard I'm thinkin' we kinda missed the spirit of the thing, so I'm now thinking about ways that we could do it again, ignoring the race, and deliberately go for some of the other awards, like the audience favorite, or the "Titanic" award (for most spectacular sinking).
The audience favorite this year was a paddle-wheel boat that was an extremely spectacular build; they had big flip sheets of steps and times and managed to cut some extremely accurate parts.
The mass start makes a lot of the alternate propulsion mechanisms kind of hairy. Before I saw the race I was thinking that the winner would be rowing, and a guy with a rowboat was a solid contender, but we launched off a boat launch ramp with floating docks on either side and he got pushed off into a dock in a way that made it hard for him to extract his oar from the lock and get the boat back on track.
And despite sitting on my butt all winter and not paddling for a decade and a half, I've pretty much got the "maneuvering with a kayak paddle" thing down pretty solidly.
#Comment Re: made: 2011-05-01 13:23:06.648373+00 by:
meuon
Awesome! Congrats! Looks like everyone had a lot of fun.
The Rules point out it was a meterials provided, 3 hour build time boat with only 1 roll of duct tape. Which makes it an even more impressive victory.
#Comment Re: made: 2011-05-01 10:05:09.683306+00 by:
DaveP
Congrats!
#Comment Re: made: 2011-05-01 05:30:53.093025+00 by:
ebradway
Just build your boat like purple-pants' belt and you're sure to sink rapidly!
Dig the Beatnik Look you have going.