When Is A Race, Not Really A Race?

Its that time of year again where Fairbanks, Alaska has been celebrating the discovery of Gold by Felix Pedro back in the early 1900's.  The chamber of commerce sponsors a street fair, a parade, a rubber ducky race, entertainment, a moving jail, and a regatta.  Unfortunately, the regatta had to be postponed at least one week due to the river being at its highest all year and it is currently under a flood warning.

The regatta is one of those crazy things that Alaskan's do after a long winter.  The regatta is a boating event but it is not a race.  It is a celebration of floating creativity that celebrates all that is gold.

The rules are interesting in that you may have an engine but you cannot use it.  All people mus have a properly approved life jacket and if there are children on the boat there must be at least one adult with them.

The boats, well I guess you could call them that, are sometimes already made paddle boards or Kayaks but others have allowed their creative side to emerge and they decorate the rubber dingys and turn them into a work of art.

This is such a crazy event that they give out four awards.  One is for the creation that has the best use of the Golden Days Theme.  Another is for the boat with the best Alaskan Ingenuity which may include the use of duck tape and tarps.  The third is for the one that is the Least Seaworthy.  It can leak, have holes, or barely be above water but it must cross the finish line. They do ask people trying for this category to have a set of dry clothing to change into before accepting the award.  The last award is for Judges Choice which means they are looking for the most creative boat.

If you are interested in what the creations look like, you can check out the website to see some from previous years.  I don't have pictures because its usually on the Sunday and I do not usually head into town on Sunday's especially as I'm packing to leave town. So I've listed two sites that have pictures you can checkout to see how creative people get.

1. http://susanstevenson.com/blog/2015/07/golden-days-red-green-regatta-2015/  The pictures are down toward the bottom.

2. These are from the 2012 and are via one of the local stations.  https://www.flickr.com/photos/kuac-fm-tv/sets/72157630773573416/

Makeshift Boats

I have a nice large black sled I use to transport boxes from the post office to my house.  Its about 3 to 4 feet long and about 2 feet wide.  It is a great size for bringing a bunch of boxes back at one go or to full several kids.  Yeah.

I had my sled in the entrance between my apartment and my neighbors because I am still unpacking my house after they painted.  Sometime during the afternoon, my sled and my ice chipper disappeared.  I couldn't figure out where they  had gone.  The sled is not great on mud.  About 2 hours later, I heard kids on the lake, looked out and what do you know!

They had taken the sled to use as a boat and the ice chipper as an oar!  They were out on the lake, using the chipper to move themselves around the lake.  They didn't ask.  They told one person it belonged to Miss B and to me they said S stole. They said they never took it but there were witnesses. 

I got my sled back after a little help from a couple other children.  It is interesting how a child's mind works.  The sled made a really nice boat for the two young men and the ice chipper worked well to help them maneuver around.  It actually looked a real row boat from a distance.  After all is said and done, I have a new use for the larger sleds.....LOL.

Wacky boats

Yesterday, I wrote of my father's dream to build a boat out of cement.  Still sounds absolutely crazy to me but after a bit of research on the internet, it is done frequently but apparently the quality of the boats vary according to who makes it.  It looks like a regular boat.

The other day, I was watching reruns of MythBusters and they were building a boat out of ice and newspapers based on a proposal from World War II to build ships from wood pulp or sawdust and water.  It was awesome watching them build it.  It was quite successful and it actually worked! Well for a little while.  It seems that if you have a boat of ice in water, even cold water, it will melt due to the temperature differences.

After another quick search, found a place that discussed strange materials used to build ships.  
How about boats made out of giant pumpkins?  You read that right!  Its a local event in Maine among other places that have pumpkin boat races.

Then there were two guys who built a boat out of plastic soda bottles.  They sailed it 530 miles around Europe so it must have been seaworthy.

Finally is a viking style boat made of 15 million Popsicle sticks but after a bit more research, turns out the Popsicle sticks are only a covering the boat.  That is rather disappointing as I'd love to see a real boat made out of Popsicle sticks.  Geez.  Talk about misleading. 

Ohhh well.  I'm off to enjoy the sun with a bike ride.