Have you ever sailed on Sultana, crewed with the rowing club, kayaked around Eastern Neck, or toodled up the Chester River on a powerboat? Now it’s time to captain your own cardboard vessel.
Register your team, design a boat, follow the rules and guidelines, then paddle your seaworthy craft into maritime history at the 5th annual Cardboard Boat Regatta on September 24th. Take home hundreds of dollars in prizes or just aim for the Titanic or People’s Choice award. Any way you sink or float, it’s great fun on the Chester River. Hurry, deadline for registration is September 23, 2011. Go to www.ces.washcoll.edu for boat-building tips or email [email protected] to register.
All cardboard boats go on display at 12 noon on race day. Captains and crew meet at 2:30 PM, the popular boat parade begins at 2:45 PM, and the race starts at 3:00 PM sharp along the Pavilion in Chestertown’s Wilmer Park. The regatta is open to schools, youth groups, groups of friends, businesses, and non-profit entities desiring to build a boat and team spirit. Participants must be at least 12 years of age and a resident of Kent or Queen Anne’s County Maryland. In case of foul weather, the race will be postponed to October 2nd at 1:00 PM.
The cardboard boat regatta is part of the Chester River Waterfront Festival that runs from 12:00-5:00 PM in Wilmer Park that Saturday. Activities include cruises aboard the 46-foot Callinectes, sailing, kayaking and canoeing on the Chester River, good food, family fun, exhibits on watershed ecology, pony rides, songs by Rebecca Pitre, and bluegrass by Chester River Runoff.
The festival is free and open to the public. Events are organized by the Center for Environment & Society at Washington College, with sponsorship by Chesapeake Bank and Trust and the Van Dyke Family Foundation. In case of foul weather, park activities will be cancelled. For information contact 410-778-7295.
Ford says
Although I love the idea of the cardboard boat race as an event to promote our appreciation of the river, and I have made lots of cardboard available for these events for twenty years, I have never received any cardboard back for proper recycling. Upon asking about the material, I have been informed that the material is coated with lots of paint, incredibly waterlogged and usually smeared with mud. I am torn. I will probably continue to offer cardboard to those who ask, but it would be nice if this material, which is a good resource, would not end up as trash. It could possibly be composted if it had environmentally benign paint on it, and all the tape was removed. Maybe organic glue and water based paint could do. Or maybe another type
of race/event could replace it.