Monday, April 23, 2012

NYU Poly Concrete Canoe Team - Better Luck Next Year!

Sad news from the NYU Poly Concrete Canoe Team. They were back at the club on Saturday, Joe Glickman worked with them for an hour then Andy took them out in the club's war canoe and they were looking pretty good.

Unfortunately, in the past they've always had a great boat that no one knew how to paddle - this year it was some issues with their boat that robbed them of their shot. It had cracked in the unmolding; they'd repaired it but that meant they'd lost the time to actually at least float the canoe before the day of the contest. It was looking like there was a good chance that the weather was going to give them the extra week they needed to do that and sort out whatever problems they found - but the race was started early enough that it was before the weather turned to utter crap and it went off without a hitch - at least from the race committee's point of view. Our team? Their canoe failed the "swamp test" ( they fill it with water before they put anyone in it and I guess it's supposed to at least have enough positive flotation to stay on the surface); if that happens, the team is allowed to attach flotation, but as they were doing that the boat cracked again and it was all over.

Really too bad - would've liked to see them compete.

But they're eager for next year now.

1 comment:

my2fish said...

tough luck on their concrete canoe. my college degree is civil engineering, and there was a group of students that did the concrete canoe, but I never really got involved with it. in retrospect, I probably should have - it would have been fun.

it will be nice to see if your paddling lessons sink in and help them compete better, though, and if nothing else - you might get some more people interested in good old regular paddling, with normal light-weight materials!