Building Cardboard Boats!?! Part 2: The Race

So, I just wrote a post called Building Cardboard Boats!?! Part One. Hopefully you read it, if not I highly suggest you do because this post will make more sense after reading that one. Anyway, the class before the boat race, our boat totally fell apart. The front detached from the rest of the boat, so in a last minute effort to save our boat we used the remaining duct tape and attempted to tape it down. Once, we finished that we had to paint the boat and of course because we were one of the last groups to finish, we got stuck with a big bucket of white paint to share between three groups. I think there were around 8 groups (boats) in our class and the first five groups used up all the colorful spray paint, so our boat had to be white. This was the day before the race and all six of us (three groups = six people) were 100% convinced that we were all going to sink like the Titanic right as we got in the boat.

Flash froward to today, October 22, 2015. The day we all had to get in our boats that were falling apart at the seams to sink in front of an audience. I have this class second period and it is about a five minute walk away and the bus was supposed to leave five minutes after the bell rang. So, I asked my first period teacher if I could leave 5 or so minutes early to put on a bathing suit and get a head start walking over. So, one of the other girls in my class came with me and we ran to the high school. Once, we got there we went into the "Boiler Room" where we had been storing our boats and carried them out to a trailer and then got on the bus. On the bus ride to the pool our teacher informed us that the Ecker students were no longer coming to watch. That was such a relief.

We got to the pool and our audience was quite smaller than excepted, which was the entire middle school. It turned out to be just a few of our parents. We get to the pool and she gives us 10 minutes to make any final adjustments needed. Now we were in full panic mode, before it was just talk about sinking, but now we could actually sink. We made our final adjustments like adding as much duct tape as we could and of course decorating. One of the requirements was that it had to have a theme (ours was tropical), so we added air fresheners that smelled like coconut and fake flowers to make it seem tropical. We also had to have costumes our costumes were bikinis, shell necklaces, sunglasses and flowers in our hair.

Our Decorations

Then the first group went off... Only one boat made it across without sinking. We were now officially terrified. Our teacher told us that only one of us had to go in the boat, but we both decided to go in it anyway. In the words of my partner Megan "Yolo". Then, came the time for our race. The gun (just kidding it was actually a whistle) went off and we went. We start to push the boat in and Megan got fell into the boat before we finished pushing it in. So, then she had to get out and we had to push it all the way in and then she got in again. It was floating with her in it, but now came the real test, would it float when I got in too? To everyone's (including myself and my parents) surprise it floated. We were so shocked that we didn't sink that we didn't start paddling for a few seconds and just sat there yelling WE'RE FLOATING!!!!!!!!!! We then made it about 3/4 of the way there when Megan informed me that the front detached again. We started paddling really fast and made it to the end, before the whole thing filled with water!

Really surprising right?!? I was honestly shocked that we floated, in fact I think we all were. So, that's the very long story of building a boat out of cardboard.

The Race (Photo Courtesy of Eric Oberg)
Teams from left to right: Toby & Ben, Victoria & Sanne and Megan & I

Building cardboard boats!?! Part One

My school offers a course called "Pre-Engineering" as an elective in 9th. So, I signed up to take it. This class is only offered at the high school building, so I have to walk to the high school every other day for that class. After wandering around searching for it for a very long time, I found it. Guess where it was... "The CTE Dungeon", basically the basement at the high school. When I get into the classroom I realized that there are only THREE other girls. I knew that there wouldn't be that many girls taking the class, but I assumed there would be more than 4 of us.

On the first day of school our teacher assigned us groups, gave us a chunk of clay and told us to make a boat. My group consisted of a boy in my grade, myself and a boy in the grade above us. As we were building the boat the kid in the grade above me asked who I had for geography. I responded with my teacher and he said "Oh he is so hard, he always caught me cheating on his tests. That's going to be the hardest part about his class". I was so baffled by what he said that I just laughed and said "That sounds like a you problem, not a me problem".  I'm not sure what motivated me to say that, but let's just say he doesn't talk to me anymore. Once we finished building the clay boats, we put them in a bucket full of water and tested how many pennies our boat could hold. Our boat held about 30 pennies.

The next day in class our teacher informed us we were going to be building cardboard boats. At first I thought she meant little cardboard boats to hold pennies again. Then, she started talking about racing them and how it had to hold two people. Let's just say I was very confused. She then clarified that we had to build boats out of cardboard to hold you and a partner. The next day we got assigned partners and started working. My partner for this project is Megan.

Calculations for finding the waterline (Page 1 of 4)

Before we could begin making the actual boats we had to make prototypes that were to scale. Once we made the prototype, we had to calculate the "waterline" of the boat or in other words how far the boat would sink down. After, the most confusing lesson ever (I'm serious... I don't think I've ever been more confused in my life) on how to find the waterline, we had to go home and figure out all the calculations. After, four and a half hours of stress and confusion I figured it out (possibly... we'll see how accurate it is). According to my calculations our actual boat is supposed to sink down 3.5 inches.

After two weeks, two rolls of duct tape, a bottle of glue and a whole lot of cardboard, we finished our boat! We are still not entirely convinced it will float, but we'll see how it goes. Our boat race is this Thursday, I'll let you know what happens in part 2. Oh and did I mention my teacher invited all of the Ecker Hill students and faculty to come and watch the race. That will be interesting... Oh and the Park Record (our local newspaper).

Our "Lovely" Cardboard Boat

Au revoir  - Claire

Going Down

For dry land training for cross-country skiing in the summer we usually run, roller-ski (A video of a professional xc skier roller skiing) or do a strength workout. One day, we went on a roller ski. Roller skiing is supposed to be like cross-country skiing without snow, except there is one huge difference, you can't stop on roller skis (people on The Amazing Race attempting to stop). People always ask my teammates and I  "How do you stop?", our response is always "You don't". There are no brakes and no way (that I'm aware of) to slow yourself down once you start going fast on a downhill other than bailing out.

Anyway back to the roller ski, it was supposed to be a long, slow, distance roller ski. I was skiing with a group of girls on my ski team and it was really windy that day. Our coach to told us to ski along this road until we got to the hospital and once we got there we were supposed to turn around. On the way out to the hospital we had a head wind, which was not fun especially because it was all uphill, but it meant that would get a tail wind on the way back. We skied out to the turn around point and met our coach, who gave us some technique tips and told us to head back to where we started.

As I mentioned before the way out was all uphill, so the way back was all downhill. Again, roller skis DO NOT have brakes, so it is more than a little scary going down hills. We are going down this one hill and if you start out "snow plowing" for lack of a better term and continue snow plowing down the whole hill, you can somewhat control your speed (or you can just go for it, but I'm terrified of hills, so I'll just stick with the first option). About 3/4 of the way down the hill I decided to just go for it because the hill was about to level out. I stop snow plowing and just let my skis go down the hill. It's going fine until I remember that there is a big, yellow post right in the middle of the trail. I lost balance, but somehow manage to make it around the post. After I got around the post I thought I was in the clear, little did I know how wrong I was. After I passed the post, I hit a rock and according to my teammates flew about 5 feet in the air and 6 feet forward. I was fine... other than the internal injuries I was convinced I had but really I was fine other than being mental scarred for life.

Me Getting Ready to Roller Ski (Photo Courtesy of Ericha Oberg)