This Weekend Bowen Island Hosted Steamship Days with all of it's fun & festivities. One of the events is a 'design and execute your own cardboard kayak' using a 4' x 6' sheet of cardboard, a roll of packing tape and an x-acto knife. Our method was to design as we built... trying to hold onto the idea of origami paper folding and applying it to a boat design. Lots of cutting and scoring took place with god knows what design in mind... but gradually a vessel slightly resembling a kayak grew out of the mess we had made of the cardboard. Nick was frantically trying to get it 'structurally sound' all the while I was cutting and scoring with great abandon. Then massive amounts of tape were needed to keep the water from pouring through the seams. Midway we looked at the competition and felt sorrily inept, but in the last 5 minutes before Times UP, it came together as if by magic. And when we put in Tyler, our little brave and skilled paddler, by god, we won! She shipped no water at all, stayed up-right (others were tipping over and sinking, or folding in the middle and going down, or simply going down). But our little vessel stayed afloat like a water bug, skimming to and fro from start to finish line, back and forth many times, all the while passing sinking and abandoned ships. All this to say, never give up the ship: miracles do happen.
 |
| Captain Tyler Matzen being greeted at the finish line by his sister. |
 |
| Captain Tyler bravely paddling our cardboard kayak to Victory |
No comments:
Post a Comment