A Late Conclusion and Farewell

Sorry for the extraordinary delay, I had not wanted to come to terms with the obvious. Not necessarily the fact that we lost at Regionals in a catastrophe so large it proves the existence of a higher power, but that my time with canoe was over.

2009 Drexel University Concrete Canoe's Phanatic failed at Regionals in punching shear. The Phanatic was in beautiful form through Saturday's display, only lightly smelling of sealant in true Drexel fashion. Sunday morning seemed to be going according to plan with a successful swamp test, but loading our first and lightest racers for the Female endurance race, a knee found a weak spot in the hull and we lost about a 4" diameter hole. A thin spot in the hull, surrounded by a thick spot, and without primary reinforcement could not hold up to the stresses of racing. We had toyed around with the difficulty of putting reinforcement in the hull, knowing full well it had it's advantages, we could not feasibly do it with our dual mold design.

In good spirit, we all got the boat out of the water and duct taped it until she was seaworthy again. Then we went and did quite well in the races, knowing that our competition was coming to an end. By the end or races, it was quite apparent that we may even take first place with the deduction for using duct tape, seeing that we won most of the races and having assumed we took best report and presentation. However the judges decided to disqualify us from Final Product seeing that we did not finish the final race due to the boat taking on some water. The judges took a very literal definition of the rule, and The University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown pressured the judges into the DQ. We had intended on passing the Nationals invitation to the runner up team, but that does not mean we were not the best boat and team at the competition. UPJ directly involved themselves with the judges and that was wrong. Their boat had an illegal mix, and if we had chosen to go through their fine print, we could have had them DQ'd as well. As it stands, they went to the National Competition and finished in last with the other disqualified teams. While it is obvious I am bitter about UPJ's move, we were not going to Nationals with a broken boat, and having UPJ win Regionals was nearly our choice.

There's plenty of photos on facebook I hope to post once I get my home computer operational. But for the now I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone that was involved in this project, most notably my partners: Pat Perhosky, Alan Fody, my crew: Mo, Nick, Ed, Aga, Marie, Alisha, Chris, Megan, Corey, my alumni support: Dave Morgan, Kyle Rutherford, Norman Jones My advisors: The Canoe Wizard, Doc Martin, Dave Cliffel, Dr. Cheng, Dr. Hsuan, My supporters: See (rear of tshirt), Dean Guiceri for throwin a few bones, and last but not least, my girlfriend Kelly for putting up with me reeking of concrete 6 outta 7 days of the week.. I'll have to write a legitimate thank you post at another time because many of these people did such a seriously great job.

In closing, I loved this project, I loved it more than school. Which is why I'm not in grad school. I jest, I wanted to work after my bachelors and that's exactly what I'm doing. Pretty damn well too, if I may say so, thanks to the Project Management I've learned from this painful experiment. I don't take anything back, and my only regret is not finding a means of getting a sturdy reinforcement in the Hull.

As a final note, all you male engineering students who are lacking love due to the Drexel M/F ratio, the concrete canoe team does wonders...