Boat Builders Float Ideas WSU Wins Competition To Design And Race A Concrete Canoe

The cheering filled the Snake River canyon.

“Don’t hold back!” someone shouted from the throng of 150 crowding the banks.

“Way to go!”

“Come onnnnnn!”

The two canoeists, Sean Quarrie in the bow and Doug Van Gelder in the stern, plowed steadily into the wind-whipped waves. Quarrie collapsed backward as they crossed the finish line.

“You rocked!” someone yelled.

It was another action-packed day in the world of science as nine teams of Pacific Northwest engineering students, including teams from Washington State University and the University of Idaho, put shoulders to paddles Sunday in a true match of brains and brawn.

Student athletes indeed. Not only must these teams out-muscle the competition, but they also must design and build their own canoes out of concrete. That’s right - concrete, as in Portland cement, the main building material according to the rules of the American Society of Civil Engineers competition.

Van Gelder, captain of the WSU team and its craft, The Rowing Stone, already has heard your reaction.

“You do know that concrete doesn’t float” is how people typically put it, he said.

At that, Van Gelder attempts to explain the theory of displacement, a rather technical description of how rocks can be kept from sinking.

“If they still don’t understand why I’m doing it, I say, ‘I’m insane,’ and they say, ‘That explains a lot,”’ Van Gelder said.

WSU took top honors Sunday, earning a berth in the national concrete canoe competition in Madison, Wis., this summer. UI placed first for its presentation but bogged down in the water to finish out of the money.

It was the eighth straight victory for WSU in as many years of competition.

The history of concrete boats, however, goes way back. The first concrete canoe was built by the University of Illinois in 1970, but Joseph-Louis Lambot patented his wire-reinforced concrete boats in 1847. In World War II, when steel was hard to come by, concrete ships were particularly popular.

The real beginning goes back to Archimedes, a mathematician and inventor from the third century B.C. who is said to have done some of his best thinking in the bath.

A bold man, Archimedes was fond of telling his students: “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth.”

A less reliable account has Archimedes lying in the tub and concocting Archimedes’ principle, a theory about the weight of a body immersed in a liquid. At that, he is said to have run naked through the streets crying, “Eureka!” or “I have found it!”

Archimedes also concluded that a craft made of any material can float as long as its weight does not exceed that of the water it displaces. That’s how battleships can be made of plate steel, which is even denser than concrete, said Ryan Wilkerson, head of the UI team.

But a familiarity with Archimedes alone does not win races. Starting last fall, the UI students concentrated on fashioning the right design for speed, maneuverability and stability, using the designs of mass-marketed canoes for guidance, said Wilkerson.

“We didn’t try to reinvent the wheel,” he said.

Male and female teams from each school raced Sunday on a 600-meter course. Then male, female and co-ed teams competed on a short course of 100 meters. The results were calculated from their times and how well they scored on a paper, oral presentation and display.

Weight is a secondary concern. The UI’s Stigandi, allegedly a Viking term for “swift moving vessel,” weighed 280 pounds. The WSU boat measured 220 pounds, while the St. Martin’s College canoe, Divinely Guided, came in under 100 pounds.

More crucial to the WSU design, said Van Gelder, was a flat bottom for easy turning and high sides for the Snake River waves.

“We knew the water has a tendency to be choppy,” he said. “At Wawawai, one hour is really nice; the next hour is really choppy.”

The University of Washington team learned as much, bringing a low-slung boat better designed for the placid waters of Seattle’s Lake Washington. The men’s team took in enough water on the long course that their boat, Top Dawg, sank 30 yards from the finish.

Even in the competitive world of engineering, it pays to have the home river advantage.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo