Cardboard Boat Regatta

If you’re anything like me, you read those words and thought, “What the hell is a cardboard boat regatta anyway?” followed by, “Wouldn’t a cardboard boat just sink as soon as you put it in the water?” I never even heard of a cardboard boat regatta until 3 years ago when I read about it through our local parks and recreation department. I was somewhat familiar with the concept though. I grew up in Minnesota where they hold a milk carton boat race every year as part of their annual Aquatennial celebration. (It’s kind of a big deal). A cardboard boat regatta is a little different though. With a milk carton boat the cartons are sealed up and you use the trapped air inside the container to keep the boat afloat, whereas a cardboard boat uses the air pockets in the corrugated cardboard to stay afloat. Milk cartons are designed to keep liquid inside, so there's no need to varnish it, but with cardboard that's probably the most important step. As you can imagine one layer of cardboard isn’t going to do much to keep you afloat. The first year we participated I sort of used the milk carton concept to build our boat. I created a large air pocket underneath thinking that would help it float better. Well… That certainly worked; perhaps a little too well. The boat had no stability what-so-ever! This was my sons first time trying to paddle a boat and he was all over the place. I thought I was going to be seasick before they even said “Go”. Our boat just kept tipping over. I don’t think we even made it passed the starting line before the inside was too soaked to hold up.

The second year we were going to just watch, but unfortunately they changed it to an evening race. We went out to dinner beforehand and ended up missing the whole thing because the place we went to eat at took FOREVER to get our food (even though we ordered it to go). This year however was going to be our year. Even though I couldn’t find much information on cardboard boat building online, I had learned a lot from our first attempt, and my son was 2 years older and a lot better at following directions. We decided to go with a slightly more complicated boat design in hopes that it would be a little sturdier and more stable. I learned even more this year than I did with our attempt. Hopefully next year we can get this all nailed down because the year after that my youngest will be old enough to participate. Then we can build a 4 person boat and race as a family.

Since I couldn’t find much help online when we were building our boat, I thought I’d share what we did and what I learned through building our own boat.

Step 1: First and foremost, save every piece of Corrugated cardboard you can get your hands on. In case you don’t know what corrugated cardboard is, it’s the cardboard with the zigzag piece in the middle. That’s what provides the air pockets that keep your boat afloat.

Step 2: We didn’t draw up any plans because our design was pretty simple, but you need to determine what you want your boat to look like and how the base of your boat will be shaped so you can draw it on your cardboard. You will need to cut 3-5 identical pieces. (Sorry about the mess. This is a messy project and it only gets worse as the project continues.) You’ll notice that I didn’t tape the flaps together. This is really not necessary.

Step 3: Glue all the base pieces together. Put something on top to weigh it down. This will ensure the cardboard doesn’t curl or bend and separate. I taped the sides together all the way around to make sure they didn’t separate, but I probably could have just taped it intermittently and saved myself a little hassle.

Step 4: Now this is where it begins to get a little more complicated. Start by determining where you want your support pieces to go. We did a closed boat design this year so our support pieces go full circle, but if you do an open boat design, you want to put your support beams running across the bottom. This will help keep your boat from folding up on itself. The reason this is such a tricky one is because you have to take into consideration where the weak spots on your boat are likely to be and where you will need room to maneuver you bodies while paddling. These will also need to be layered 3-5 pieces thick, and glued together.

You will need support beams running the length of the boat as well.

Step 5 & 6: I put these two steps together because you will probably have to go back and forth between the two steps a couple times. First you’re going to create a pattern by covering where you want your cardboard to go and outlining where you’ll need it cut. I used large sheets of tracing paper, but newspaper will work just fine too. Once you cut out the shape you’re going to score the cardboard lengthwise so that it’ll bend to make the shape that you want. After you attach that piece to your boat, go back to step 5 and trace a new pattern to fill the empty space. Continue until you’ve attached all the pieces to your boat.

Step 7: Your boat should look something like this (only with your own design pf course). Now you’re ready to paint and varnish.

What I learned:

1. Give yourself plenty of time. Just because you CAN build a boat like this in 1 day, doesn’t mean you should. I had to rush to get it done and ended up staying up most of the night to finish it.

2. Make sure you have a full day or 2 to allow the paint to dry. I thought that since we used spray paint, it would dry a lot faster and it wouldn’t need much time to dry. Our paint was still tacky the next morning. Even the fastest drying paint will take a lot longer to dry if it’s humid.

3. Don’t use spray paint! The first year I painted our boat with a can of paint that we had out in the garage from another project and it worked great. This year I used spray paint. I didn’t even realize that spray paint is a lot thinner; obviously, it has to be so that it can be easily sprayed onto the project. Thinner paint means that it has to have a higher moisture content. The cardboard soaked up all that excess moisture and the duct tape peeled up from the cardboard. I ended up having to tape over a lot of it the next morning which set us way back.

4. Make sure your boat is properly secured. I bungeed our boat to the roof of our car and it held fine until I hit the main road. The wind caught up under the boat and I had to pull over and fasten the front end down through the sunroof.

5. Give yourself plenty of time for repairs. We were set behind by the repairs we had to make before we left for the regatta. I had planned on waking up, loading up the boat, and arriving just in time for the start of the race. Fortunately, the youth category is always the last to start, so I figured that we should still have time to unload and race. Then we had to stop and adjust the bungees. We arrived just as the youth boats were lining up to race, but when I looked up at our boat the wind and the bungees had pulled the duct tape off part of the sides and I had to get that fixed before we would have been able to race. (Once again, that probably wouldn’t have happened if the boat was completely dry to begin with.)

6. Make sure the side of the cardboard that’s scored is facing the inside of the boat. Otherwise you’ll have to seal off all the cut lines so that water doesn’t get into your boat and sink it.

7. Don’t just duct tape the pieces of cardboard together. When you build your support beams and the base of your boat make sure you glue them. The glue will add more durability to your boat.

8. Don't take shortcuts. Cardboard boats are only going to get SO sturdy, so any shortcut, no matter how small, is just going to jeapordize the structural integrity more.

9. Make sure you have plenty of everything. I ran out of glue and ended up going to the store to buy more. Then just as I was about to tape the last pieces together I ran out of duct tape and had to run to the store again. (And as we all know, nothing looks more suspicious than someone walking into a store to buy duct tape at 1:00 am and paying with cash. That is, unless that person forgets their wallet and is desperate enough for said duct tape to return for it.)

With all that said, if you want to race in a cardboard boat regatta, be sure to follow these tips and you should have no problems. The biggest thing is to give yourself plenty of time. I’ve also noticed that the simpler designs usually do better in the races. You’ll save a lot of time, energy, and frustration if you stick with a simple design and then go crazy with the painting verses making a wacky boat. Have fun, and remember that all the boats eventually sink. That's kind of the point. The ones that last the whole race get sunk in the derby at the end. The point is to have fun!

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