Thursday, April 19, 2012

Whatever floats your boat!


 Remember last week when I told you all about this amazing event I made up in my head about boats made of only duct tape and cardboard?  So Saturday was the day of the race and we had a total of 10 teams to try their skills at boat making.  Well lets just say the event was a blast and we all had a ton of fun.


 The rules were the boat had to be made of only duct tape and card board and it had to carry two people.  We set up a safety line and had the boys wear life jackets.  The competition was a single boat timed event so everyone could cheer the boys on.  Let me just tell you that currently we don't have any future engineers but maybe after some rethinking of plans for next year I might change my mind.  The boat above was called "The Black Mamba" and looked really fast and of course it was made with black duct tape.  The only thing they needed to do was make the sides a little taller and more fore to aft strength.  The boat folded in half from the get go and the walls took in water instantly.  Now if it were a single person event it might have had a chance.


 The boat above would have taken the prize for longest afloat but soon after this picture the rear passenger jumped out and pushed the boat in.  Another mistake made was the oar situation.  They had nothing to move the boat but it could have been a contender.  Notice the tall side walls and quality placement of the duct tape to keep a solid portion of the water out.


Here you see the boat my son was in charge of making.  Its main flaw was that the stability was off and once the first guy got in it started to lean and as soon as the second guy tried to get it the thing turned over.  Once the boat was over the boys freaked out over the time and decided to just swim the boat in upside down.  The made it to the shore and tried to pull it up to the finish line but it had about 25 gallons of water in it and slowed them down.

In all this was so much fun and I think we will for sure be doing this again next year.  I bet we get alot more teams to put more effort into the designs and maybe even some style like colored duct tape and maybe one of those ladies on the front that vikings used to have.  Sometimes we need to participate in a silly game to remember that life isn't always BG numbers and counting carbs.  It is about having fun and naturally burning off some of those sugars by laughing at cardboard duct tape boats.

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