Competition floats students' boats

PORTAGE LAKES - On a day when snow was forecast, a Michigan Technological University student was lifted from a her canoe on Turkeyfoot Lake by a barrel-chested male classmate dressed in a T-shirt and suspendered rubber hip waders.

She was bundled up against the wind and wet, but her feet were bare.

Both students laughed as a crowd of a few hundred well wishers and fellow rowers whooped their approval.

The group wasn't cheering on an elaborate school prank, they were supporting a long-respected academic competition: the annual concrete canoe race.

Yes, a stone boat race.

The contest is held to give students a chance to see their studies at work. The concrete canoe illustrates the engineering principal that even extremely heavy objects float, as long as they displace more than their weight in water.

The competition was the marquee event in a weekend gathering of the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers, hosted by the University of Akron. Eight schools in the United States and Canada competed in the 2004 North Central Regional Conference.

The conference included a job fair, a concrete bocce ball competition, student-built steel bridge displays, formal presentations of the plans used to build the canoes and bridges and the requisite college bash-till-dawn at a downtown bar.

Each university had mix design, paddling, hull design and construction teams.

A team can win the overall award without doing well on the lake, but for engineering students, the concrete canoe race brings special bragging rights.

``We had both boats poured before Christmas Day,'' said UA freshman Sarah Gentner, a member of the mix design and testing team. ``We were really on top of things because we hosted this year.''

On sight, the stone boats looked like any other canoe. They range in weight from 130 to more than 200 pounds. A typical fiberglass or aluminium model can weigh a third of that range.

The goal, Gentner said, is to build a lighter, faster canoe. ``We tried 23 different mixes before we settled on one,'' she said. The recipe UA chose was a mixture of concrete, glass bubbles and micro light, a type of volcanic ash with the consistency of powered sugar. The fillers take up space without adding much weight.

Most teams spent the summer and fall practicing on lakes near their schools.

The UA rowers added their own brand of hazard duty. ``We raced in at least one blizzard,'' freshman paddling team member Jim Cooper said, ``so we're ready for the cold.''

Michigan Tech's team, which has competed at the national conference two of the last three years, used its school's indoor pool when the weather got rough.

Rowers competed in slalom, distance and sprint races, fighting their way through wind and currents to the farthest buoy placed 1,600 feet from shore as park rangers and scuba divers looked on from a motor boat.

Teams in the female slalom completed the course in times ranging from about six minutes to more than 16 minutes.

The boat from Michigan Tech was the first in the lake. Two women fought gusts of wind that chopped the water to aim their boat for the rows of yellow and green buoys. At one point, the wind seemed to stall the boat, then force it into wide turns.

``That's eating up time,'' an onlooker explained. ``Dig, dig, another shouted as the rowers finally cleared the last zigzag and headed for the far marker then turn into the home stretch.

The Michigan Tech team finished the course in eight minutes.

``It's exciting,'' said Pat Martin, father of senior paddling team member Tim Martin. ``These are the kids who will build our roads, bridges, factories and rest homes,'' he said with a smile.

The Canadian team completed a slow but steady run. Michigan State University rowers wobbled their way through the course. Steel bars that braced their road-broken boat disqualified them from competition in the race, but not from participating. Ohio Northern women picked up speed in the straightaway, skimming across the water on the last leg of the race.

Akron rowers, sophomore Sarah Crouse and junior Megan Talcott, were last to climb into their boats. The women with the home lake advantage cut through the slalom barely missing the bobbing markers. At the sprint for the far buoy, coach Ed Lezek yelled, ``Wind it up, wind it up.''

On the last stretch the UA boat raced toward the final buoy, beating closest competitor Michigan Tech by three minutes.

First bragging rights belonged to Akron.

``You did great,'' someone yelled at Talcott. ``Wait till you see the guys,'' she said.

For the first time in 15 years, Akron would go on to win every race.

Reach Kymberli Hagelberg at 330-996-3038 or khagelberg@thebeaconjournal.com