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Exciting development this week: I'm officially putting together an April Tools Wooden Boat Challenge team with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
randomdreams, neuro42 and niac.
What is April Tools? It's kind of like a 48 hour film contest, except with boats. For a (not so) modest entry fee, you're given an unknown set of materials at 10:00. You have an hour to plan and then 3 hours to build a boat. At 14:00, you race it around the harbor against all the other teams. No power tools allowed, except a battery-powered screwdriver. You can only use the materials provided, and there is always a random twist thrown in to prevent planning ahead of time. One year you had to power your boat with a paddle wheel. Another year concrete form pontoons were a major part of the materials.
I've wanted to do this since it was obliquely referenced in a Wired article years ago, but the last few years have been bad for this kind of resource-intensive effort. I'm really, really jazzed about this. Likerandomdreams said, we never did get a Scrapheap Challenge team put together, but this won't be far off. I expected to come back bruised, splintered, soaked and grinning like an idiot.
It's April 30, way up on the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver. Should be a lot of fun, if people want to come up to watch, but it's about a five hour drive from Seattle, including the ferry. We'll probably try to head up the night before and get a hotel room for the night.
Pictures (and maybe video of an impressive capsize) will be posted here after the event, of course.
randomdreams, neuro42 and niac.What is April Tools? It's kind of like a 48 hour film contest, except with boats. For a (not so) modest entry fee, you're given an unknown set of materials at 10:00. You have an hour to plan and then 3 hours to build a boat. At 14:00, you race it around the harbor against all the other teams. No power tools allowed, except a battery-powered screwdriver. You can only use the materials provided, and there is always a random twist thrown in to prevent planning ahead of time. One year you had to power your boat with a paddle wheel. Another year concrete form pontoons were a major part of the materials.
I've wanted to do this since it was obliquely referenced in a Wired article years ago, but the last few years have been bad for this kind of resource-intensive effort. I'm really, really jazzed about this. Like
randomdreams said, we never did get a Scrapheap Challenge team put together, but this won't be far off. I expected to come back bruised, splintered, soaked and grinning like an idiot.It's April 30, way up on the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver. Should be a lot of fun, if people want to come up to watch, but it's about a five hour drive from Seattle, including the ferry. We'll probably try to head up the night before and get a hotel room for the night.
Pictures (and maybe video of an impressive capsize) will be posted here after the event, of course.