Big Blue - Sponsored by Chilpotle

Article By Shorty


Last year I made a wooden dolly to wheel my boats around while I worked on them. It was a basic wooden frame and had a couple of lawn mower wheels. The ability to wheel around the boat was great, but it was so low to the ground I kept having to bend over or kneel on the ground, and at race day the wheels would get stuck in the sand. So this year I made a couple of metal boat dollies using parts chopped from old junky kid bikes and a bed frame that I found in the alley.

Works great, even though one tire is from an 18" bike, and the other is from a 16". I had no idea there was so much welding involved with boats made completely of cardboard.

This is the first year I have competed in class 2, which requires use of a mechanical drive system, and no hand paddles. I had big plans for a fiarly complicated systme, but with limited time cut every corner I could and ended up with a wimpy Z shaped metal bar that had paddle wheels attached to the ends. I was also going to make a plwood insert to run the whole thing on (similar to the steel frames that others use), but didn't have time and just made mounts for the gunnels.

Because of the design changes at the last minute, I didn't reinforce the bulkhead behind me enough, and as I started to pedal, I kept hearing all sorts of cracks and rips. The back end of the boat was getting pretty beat up at the first race. Managed to finish with a time of 1:40.

Here is my cut throat crew, they carried cardboard swords on the trip incase anyone got too close to us.

There were 6 boats in class 2, and only 5 of them run at a time, so there was one extra boat I didn't get to race against in the first round - it was the most promising looking, the boat "Power Surge". They had run class 1 in previous years, but for this year made a drop in class 2 drive system which was a double paddle drive - so I knew they had more power, plus their hull shape was a long skinny like mine.

They ran a couple of races later and came in with a time of 2 minutes. I was guessing they were taking it easy on their drive system, and with only 20 seconds seperating us, I was going to have to push it in the final race.

My boat kept getting softer and softer as I waited for that final race, and thoughts of it falling apart kept going thru my mind. The forward end of my boat was pretty solid, so I figured if the back fell away, I'd just hold on for dear life and keep paddling whatever was still together.

At the start of the final race, I started pumping as hard as I could !!!

Wobble, wobble, wobble......

I couldn't see behind me, so I kept asking my crew where they were....
"right there!"


How close ???
"really close !!!"


I wobbled as fast as I could !!!

WHOOO HOOOO!!!!!
First place for Class 2 !!!!








Getting the trophy -- this is really an accomplishment because for the past 4 years, Class 2 has been won by Randy Smith in his boat Moby Brick. Lucky for me, Randy was out of town during the race!

So watch out next year Randy, I am coming for you !!!



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