Cardboard Boat Contest

[Dinerman]

well- I wasn't exactly sure where to put this, but here it is.

This is my second year participating in a cardboard boat contest.
The rules are:
the boat must be built entirely of cardboard, duct tapeand glue.
It may be painted
It must hold two people, who will paddle it across a lake.

Last year, the boat took on no water, and performed reasonably well. The downside was it looked pretty awful. I'd had no time to paint it or do any fine tuning. The boat was 15 feet long, and I'd had to take it to the site disassembled in the back of a minivan. I assembled it in a parking deck.

This year, I'm using the same design (essentially). Here's my scale model, showing the ribs.
Is anyone here experienced with boat building or design? I'm sure not. I just built it to be strong (which it is) and to look cool.

 

[Samsa]

Wow

I don't think I could manage to build a working boat out of cardboard, nor would I have imagined it was possible in the first place. Good luck this year!

 

[Dinerman]

it can be done all right.
the nuttiest one I saw last year was shaped like an old claw foot bathtub, shower curtain and all.
To get the front curvature, he'd laminated together over a hundred sheets of cardboard, crushed them down, carved it with a sawzall into the shape, sanded it, and finally sealed and painted it so that it would be smooth and waterproof.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

I am not sure about boats, but I once won a cardboard canoe competition and my canoe held two people.

 

[Dinerman]

and here's last year's boat. This year I need to work on stiffening the center (passenger) walls, cleaning up the lines of the boat, and painting the thing.

 

[GOK]

These are so cool - when is the comp? I hope you'll keep us up to spec DM. Oh, and the best of luck!

 

[Pilgrim]

My daughters' high school has a cardboard boat competition every year. Exposed seams of any kind are the enemy. Flat or smooth-bottomed boats with multiple layers of materials and no seams open to the water fare best.

The winner this year was a canoe design that was about 2.5 feet wide - I think it made 40 trips from shore to the buoy. Astounding!

 

[Dinerman]

the competition is in Columbia, Maryland. I'm not sure what the date on it is this year, but last year it was in June.
it took a whole lot longer to build than i thougt it would, so this year, I'm starting a month early.

 

[CharlieH.]

Great stuff! I've heard of cardboard bridges, but never cardboard boats.

 

[Jay]

This makes me want to build a boat.

 

[Novella]

In high school I had to make a boat for physics class. It was a 3 person project, with two of the three having to be in the boat.

My two friends were in the boat, I blacked them out in case they don't appreciate being posted online. Not anywhere as cool or elaborate as the boat you made! Of course, we only did it in an afternoon as a class requirement. It had no problem floating and moving along the school swimming pool - until it was deliberately flipped over by some guys. There was some reason we called it duck-22, some sort of catch-22 relation or joke we had going, but it's been so long I don't remember.

 

[Dinerman]

I think the duck 22 looks great.

you'd not believe how many of these fancy looking boats sank. there was an absolutley beautiful trimaran at the race. all kinds of curves and triangular bracing. the people got on it, the deck folded in two and the pontoons went flying.
now i need to go to the cardboard warehouse and get about 50 sheets, not to mention duct tape. I used obscene ammounts on the last one.