Due to inclement weather, last year’s Cardboard Boat Regatta was moved indoors to Prothro Natatorium, where the Engineering 110 students raced their watercraft in the pool. Disintegrating corrugated board and pool filters were not meant to be friends, however, so as the 2009 event approached all eyes were on the skies, hopeful that the weather would cooperate.

Emerald Epiphany is looking good so far.Fortunately, the weather on Thursday afternoon, Sept. 24 was hot and mostly sunny as the three teams — Daisy’s Pearl, Reckless Abandon and Emerald Epiphany — lined up on the dock at Sweet Briar College’s Lower Lake in preparation for the 2009 Regatta.

The competition was part of Designing Our World: An Introduction to Engineering Design, a course that’s open to all Sweet Briar students, regardless of what they intend to major in. Each of the three teams had at least one engineering science or engineering management major, but Emerald Epiphany also included music major Mary Massie ’10.

The teams had only three weeks to work on their boats, a week less than previous Regattas. Each boat was made of up to 20 pounds of corrugated board, donated by International Paper, and with no more than 50 feet of duct tape.

Just before the race, P.J. Peek ’12 and Casey Dyckman ’13 were using the last of their duct tape to reinforce the paddles they would use to power their boat, Reckless Abandon. Peek and Dyckman had also crafted triangular-shaped tubes which were placed in the hull of their boat in an effort to make it more buoyant. “It looks really simple, but it’s not,” Dyckman said.

Casey Dyckman (from left) and P.J. Peek relax in the water after their boat flips.The boat, which would be paddled canoe style, also had no exterior seams “so the water can’t directly seep in,” Dyckman said.

Emerald Epiphany — the team of music major Massie, Paula Southworth ’13 and Rachel Wilkerson ’13 — hoped one judge’s clothing choice would give them the edge in the design competition, which was scored before the race.

Massie pointed out that Rick Manasa, Regatta judge and husband of Sweet Briar President Jo Ellen Parker, was wearing an emerald green polo shirt. Parker, attending her first Regatta, joked, “Is the fact that one of our judges is wearing an emerald green shirt at all prejudicial?”

At least one group, Daisy’s Pearl, made five boats over the three-week period, trying to get the right combination of buoyancy and speed. The Pearl, designed and piloted by Caitlin Jones ’12 and Lindsay Davis ’13, had outriggers that in a practice run the night before had successfully stabilized the boat.

Jones and Davis also had a trade secret of sorts. Sometimes, Jones said minutes before race time, the duct tape didn’t adhere to the cardboard that well, so they heated it with an appliqué iron which seemed to make the boat more watertight.

“We went over every seam and it really seals it up and keeps it from bubbling,” Jones said. “We were trying to keep it hush-hush [in class] but they can’t do anything now. In class, we weren’t saying anything. They could go get a straightening iron from their room.”

Jones, a transfer student from West Virginia University and an engineering management major, said she and her partner tested their boat at around 8 p.m. the night before the race and it stayed afloat. “We didn’t go too far with it because it was dark,” she said, adding, “We are really confident it will go the whole way.”

For all three teams, “the whole way” might have been too much to ask for that day. After the horn sounded, Reckless Abandon didn’t make it an arm’s length from the dock before tipping over and tossing Peek and Dyckman into the lake.

Daisy’s Pearl was next to submerge, making it about 25 yards from the starting line, and Emerald Epiphany was last to take on water, leaving the crew of Southworth and Wilkerson to make good use of their lifejackets.

Caitlin Jones (left) and Lindsay Davis give an interview to WSET-13 following the race.Lacrosse coach Hillary London called the play-by-play during the race and might have described it best: “It’s the trifecta of failure,” she said, laughing. “It’s the shortest race I’ve ever been a part of. This really should have been a swimming race.”

Prizes, donated by the Boxwood Circle, were to be awarded for speed, design, buoyancy and overall points. With speed and buoyancy out the window because everyone sunk, awards were presented for design and overall points.

President Parker handed out the medals saying, “It’s sort of like the Olympics,” and pointed out that PricewaterhouseCoopers, an organization that guards the results of other hotly contested competitions, was nowhere to be found.

Daisy’s Pearl won the design contest and the overall category. Emerald Epiphany finished second in both categories and Reckless Abandon third.

Although she was disappointed that none of the boats finished the course, assistant professor of engineering Dorsa Sanadgol, who teaches Engineering 110, said, “I think they learned something and hopefully they had fun.”

Along with dozens of faculty, staff and students, all three local TV stations were on hand for the action. To watch the coverage, visit WSET’s Web site or WSLS's.