It is good to have fun. And it is good to save the Planet. But when you can combine both: Oh Boy!
Each year the Center for Wooden Boats hosts an unusual boat race called the Quick and Darting. The race is held on Lake Union in Seattle which is linked by locks to Puget Sound—it’s so kind of the ocean. This nearly nautical endeavor—part of the popular Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival—challenges teams of two to design original watercraft and build them within 24 hours and then race. (Hint: This is the fun piece of this equation).
The race is not unique because variants of this type of race happen pretty much wherever there is boating water and people who might benefit from a little lithium in their coffee or a spare rubber ducky. And many of us have attended bathtub races or watched people risk drowning in soggy cardboard or un-steer-able cattle troughs (sorry).
All of the above while wickedly cool, hardly rates the coveted green electrons of Greenopolis. What gets this here is that two teams from decided to take one part Quick and Daring and mix it with a healthy dose of Junkyard Wars: Their boats were built mainly with salvaged materials from the RE Store in Seattle.
The first team was the Crab Boat and built by Sarah Krueger and Noel Stout. Which was a “yar” vessel (see Philadelphia Story) to be sure, but although they used a lot of salvaged materials such as closet poles for outrigger supports, a hand rail for the mast, a cedar gutter as an outrigger, and a 60's-era hang-gliding wing for a sail, some “new” stuff somehow climbed over the gunnels and made their craft a little bit of a hybrid. (They get the two thumbs up, but didn’t get the extra credit points for their nearly 8 hours of labor.)
The true prize goes to the O’Neill brothers—Tim and Bryan—who both work at the RE Store and were purist in terms of what went into their 24-hour boat—nothing new, borrowed, or blue for them. Just two whiskey barrels for outriggers, a used cedar siding constructed punt, and a tiller made out of a stair balustrade and a chunk of 1 by 10. The bamboo mast in the plan was scraped in favor of an old beer banner stretched between two handmade paddles. Their boat took roughly 5 hours to build and then it was off to the races!
The whiskey barrel boat was not as fleet as the wind (whiskey barrel boat is far left and crab boat has red, yellow, and blue sail). But hopefully the two boats did sell the message that recycling and reuse could be fun and functional. And perhaps a few folks—among the fun and chaos—made the connection between resource conservation, reuse and the health of our waters including our precious oceans.
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