Cardboard Kayak building (The full story from salford)

Chris Llove 2014

 

 

On the 23rd of march there was varsity event for Salford University, Manchester University and Manchester Metropolitan University. On top of the usaul kayak racing events and polo tornement this year we each decided to build homemade kayaks and race those aswell...

 

March 11th fianal details of the day are finalised and rules for the homemade kayak are outlined.

1: Must only carry one passenger (this decison was made in the intrest of safety to minimise the potential for bodies in the water).

2: Must be made of found materials (for a product designer this is nothing new but it also ment no bespoke parts could be made).

3: Must be able to get out of the boat quickly incase of emergancy.

 

March 20th the materials are gathered, building begins.

So the design for this kayak was to remake the boat from 2 years ago the last time salford went to the varsity event, this means alot of carboard (yes a cardobard boat on a river with a 30 foot drop and many rocks) as head designer for the project I thought it would be a good idea for us to stick with our roots and use materials that were never intended for use such as this. However the last carboard boat salford made (before I was involed with the club) sank and degraded with in seconds of launching into the river, this wouldbe a huge problem to overcome in such a short amount of time, so I had a think about what materials we use in the workshop at university and instantly I though modeling foam (it might float) I was lucky enough to find a 2m x 1m x 40mm piece of foam lying around. so all that was needed now was 300m of gaffa tape which was on the approved list of item we're allowed to buy. Then it was a long night working on a rectangular design for stability, at the end of the night we had our boat six hours of work on a flat bottom high sided style of kayak in the hope that the water level would not be to much higher than the foam base.

 

March 23rd the gaffa tape has held for a few days in a damp room this was a good sign but the hydrodynamics of the boat are being put into qustion by the other universities but I remain confident the last event of the day was the homemade boat race manchester met was our biggest rivals in this event die to there design of 2 litre bottles straped together in the shape of a racing kayak but as they were lowering their boat into the water above the weir they capsised imediatly and manchester universities boat looked like a pellet of wood wrapped in parcel tape (with nails sticking out) we wern't worried about losing to them more scared for their safety. The boats were lined up on top of the weir the claxon sounded and they were away both manchester uni and met got stuck at the top of the weir giving salford shallow boat an early lead but what would happen at the bottom of the weir (my own prediction was that it would either disintergrate of be hevaily damaged in the recirculating water at the bottom) to everyones surprize no only did it survive the drop it got some air and went over the recirculating water it put this down to the way the front of the boat was designed on a 50 degree angle letting the water push the boat to the top. for the next 1km salford were in the lead thanks to the instability of the other two boats which were falling apart or capsising. Unfortunatly salfords boat wasn't the fastest due to its width and its flat front end this ment that with only 100m to go we were over taken by manchester met on the final drop.

 

So what have i learned from this experiance more foam would be usful but instead of having a font end carve it into a cone but apart from the lack of speed the boat was a success so next years boat will be faster and look even better but made from carboard because we proved it could be done although we got second place for the race everyone at the event loved the boat that we built here at salford.