Floating along like concrete
Canoes sliced the glassy surface of the Sparks Marina Sunday as award-winning paddlers rowed the boats through the water during practice. The paddlers, members of the University of Nevada, Reno’s Concrete Canoe Team recently began training to compete in the National Concrete Canoe Championships.
Civil engineering majors Daniel Bell, 21, Nathan Purves, 23, Katie Bowden, 20, and Katie Ezell, 20, take a warm-up lap in their concrete canoe around the Sparks Marina.
The team, made up of students from various engineering fields, will train rowers and prepare a verbal presentation, a written report and a visual display and build a concrete canoe for the competition. Last year, the team took first place and they said they plan on taking the title again.
UNR will host the Mid-Pacific Regional Concrete Canoe competition Apr. 17 and 18, giving the team a home field advantage toward a step in winning the 2009 national competition in Tuscaloosa, Ala.
The concrete canoe team started paddling practice, but will wait to start building this year’s canoe until the new rules are released.
“Each year a new set of rules comes out in terms of the dimensions and materials allowed,” Professor David Sanders, the faculty advisor for the team, said.
The canoes aren’t made of Ready-Mix, so building takes time.
“Normal concrete weighs about 145 pounds per cubic foot, whereas the mixes used in the canoes are all less dense than water,” Sanders said. “Even if the entire canoe was flooded, it would still float because the concrete is so light.”
Carbon fiber net and thin steel cables are also used to reinforce the boat.
“I’d say once the building starts, we spend about 10-12 hours a week on it, but right before we poured the concrete last year I remember working on it for 76 hours in four days,” team member Mark Cukrov, a civil engineering major, said.
At the competition, the team is graded on five separate sections: a five-minute-long verbal presentation followed by a seven-minute question-and-answer session, a written report detailing the construction process and materials used, a visual display showing the construction of the canoe, the quality of the canoe itself and of course its performance in the races.
“Its our goal this year to win the paddling, as well as the overall,” team member Jeff Weagel, a civil engineering major, said.
The five races include: men’s sprint, women’s sprint, men’s endurance, women’s endurance and co-ed sprint. The sprints are 200 meters and the endurance races are 600 meters.
UNR has been competing in concrete canoe competitions since 1979, but there was a seven-year hiatus beginning in 1998. In 2005, the team was revived but had to start from scratch. Despite the inexperience, in only the second year of the team’s resurgence UNR had already placed sixth in the nation in 2006. In 2007, the team edged its way into third place followed by a national championship in 2008, the team’s fourth year of existence.
“I was fortunate enough to be there when the team became national champions last year,” Sanders said, “I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
Join the Team
Members of the American Society of Civil Engineers can join the concrete canoe team. For more information, visit www.nevadacanoe.com or e-mail the team at nevadacanoe@gmail.com.
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