Epic Fail...almost

During our first race we were pitted against (cheating) Tymon. So we were forced to push our boat beyond its limits. When I jumped on the front of the boat the middle caved in and forced water on top of it. That was not good at all. We managed to finish the heat with an extremely slow time of 1:44.

Our last race really was epic fail. We got caught on the milk jug buoy and dragged a cinder block about 20 feet before realizing. So in itself thats a pretty awesome thing to accomplish with a cardboard boat, even if it wasn't our original goal. It was a fun day.

Step Five

Final Touches: This is where I talk about how our boat started to get thrown together because we ran out of time to do a completely thorough job. Oh well, its going to work well enough. We had to add a few triangular supports to the top so that we don't bend in the middle, and I had to paint the top so that it would be semi-water proof.

None of the other blogs have pictures, we should get extra credit.

Step Four

Building Stabilizers: We decided to fabricate two rectangular pontoons to go on each side of the boat to help us balance in the water. We took two full pieces of cardboard and scored them so that there were 4 sections running longways. We folded the pieces up, and made 3 square pieces to help make the pontoons sturdy. After the two pontoons were done and taped we painted them as well.

One problem we ran into was how we would attach the stabilizers on the body of the boat. This was easily remedied however by utilizing the excess cardboard we had on each side. We scored that so that it could move freely, then attached the stabilizers to that so that it could bounce in the water and move as needed.

Step Three

Painting the 'Toons: After both pontoons were clear taped, they still looked lacking of something; spray paint. One coat of semi-gloss black rustoleum was enough to make the pontoons shine. Mike Layed down a stencil on the front of each pontoon and sprayed olive drab over that.

Step Two

Fabrication: We have started to build our full size boat today. The first task we completed was building our two triangular pontoons. We realized that we needed to stabilize and reinforce the pontoons so three triangular supports were strategically laid out in the pontoon. After that we sealed each pontoon with brown packaging tape. To completely seal each pontoon we wraped them in clear tape all the way around. After doing this we realized the tape helped reinforce them as well.

Step One

Planning the boat: We had to make an inventor model of our idea for the boat. A scale model was not required because we spent so much time perfecting our inventor model that there was no more cardstock left for the scale model. Regardless, we are holding true to the model with our full size boat.

Entry 2

At first glance building cardboard boats for a class may seem like a blow off assignment. Although upon further inspection one will find that this project will indeed teach and reinforce many values that have been previously instilled upon our moldable minds. We will learn basics of bouyancy and even aerodynamics. We will learn how to work with other members of the class, no matter how much we don't like them (cough cough Dengate, I'm kidding).

We chose to make a boat utilizing three triangular pontoons, partly based off of the winning boats design last year, and our own experiences in last years race. We quickly realized that our sides were much too high after getting red marks on our triceps. Another flaw we had was that the bottom of our boat was too thin, despite already using two layers or double-corrugate cardboard. One good aspect of our design was that our displacement was very small, so we had very little resistance from the water to paddle. By utilizing three pontoons with a platform on it our displacement will be very small and we will no thave to worry about being able to adequately paddle our boat to VICTORY.

So far in class we have not started to build out boat. After working with Adam Lessel and Dengate on the trebuchet we have realized we work much better when we have 5 or 6 hours to work, rather than doing a little bit here and there. Most of our time in class has been planning and reconaissance. mwahhahaha.