SKOWHEGAN, Maine — Engineering students at the University of Maine had planned to test their design skills Saturday at Lake George Regional Park during the New England Regional Concrete Canoe Competition but ice prevented them for putting the canoes in the water.
More than 200 students from 11 New England universities, including UMaine, subjected their concrete creations to judging on a variety of characteristics at UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center on Friday and in a campus parking lot on Saturday.
About 20 UMaine students spent the academic year designing and building a concrete canoe that was to be judged in four categories: design report, oral presentation, aesthetics and practicality, or how well the boat floated and raced on Saturday had they gotten in the water. Oral presentations and table displays were judged Friday on the Orono campus. The aesthetics and practicality were to be tested Saturday.
Eric Farnsworth, the co-captain of the design team with Doug Logie, 20 of Hodgdon, said on April 19 that the focus this year had been on improving the formula of the concrete so it could better withstand being in the water. He spent several hours sealing the bottom of the canoe.
“Last year, the concrete broke off in chunks,” Farnsworth, a sophomore from Topsham majoring in civil engineering, said.
The team painted the face of the UMaine Black Bear on each side of the 200-pound, blue canoe. One side of the vessel was decorated with a summer scene with a lighthouse and lobsters paddling by. The other side was a winter scene with snowflakes falling on a ski slope and a moose peering off into the distance.
Inside the canoe, the team painted the state of Maine and canoe ribs, which represent the ones in conventional canoes.
Farnsworth said Sunday that the UMaine team placed seventh but he did not have the ranking for other entrants. He said the team lost points on its oral presentation and the written portion of the event.
“It was really disappointing not to be in the water this year, but we are going to try again next year,” he said.
In Maine, the regional contest began in the early 1970s when a UMaine civil engineering professor challenged his students to create a concrete canoe that could compete in the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race, according to Lindsey Kandiko, event and conference coordinator for the university chapter of American Society of Civil Engineers, which sponsors the event.
The idea traveled to other universities in the region, Kandiko said earlier this month. The first national concrete canoe competition took place in 1988. It will be held this year in June at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.
UMaine has hosted the regional competition twice in the last 20 years and has advanced to nationals twice in the last decade.