Hasta La Ideas

(Photo: Phil Klein)

“Go paddle a concrete canoe” sounds like a prickly imperative to file alongside “Take a long walk off a short pier.” In fact, it’s the challenge handed down annually by the American Society of Civil Engineers, which last weekend held its twenty-third annual National Concrete Canoe Competition. The NCCC invites engineering students from universities throughout the United States and Canada to apply all that book learnin’ to the real world problem of how to design, construct, and race canoes made of concrete (specifically, sustainable mixtures, and don’t even try to get away with a gravimetrically-measured air content of less than 6%!).

Teams are judged on their performance in both athletic and academic events, including oral and written presentations detailing the design and construction of their canoe. But the most crowd-pleasing portion comes when the canoes take to the water in a series of five races: men’s and women’s slalom races and men’s, women’s, and co-ed sprint races. This year’s big winner was the home team from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (pictured above), which sailed the 170-pound “Amazona” to the school’s first ever national title and $5,000 in scholarship money. The University of Nevada-Reno and Montreal’s Ecole de Technologie Superieure won second and third place, respectively. Check out photos of all the competitors paddling away (rowing is strictly prohibited) here.

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