Ready, set, cardboard boat

David Watson’s career as an electrical engineer in the Navy may have not prepared him for building cardboard boats, but he likes doing it.

Watson’s labor of love is for Rock Hill Ruitan Club’s Cardboard Boat Regatta, scheduled tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. at Aquia Landing Park in Stafford County.

This is the seventh year the North Stafford club has held the regatta, which usually attracts 25 to 30 cardboard boaters to the beach, all with hopes their homemade creations will float.

The regatta is open to anyone who can use cardboard, glue, some paper tape and a lot of imagination to make a boat that will brave the Potomac River.

Watson has a method to his boatbuilding, using cardboard he got at moving warehouse and molding it to what looks like a slim A-frame home, forming a boat with a pointed bow and seat for two, he then glues extra layers of cardboard to the boat to make it stronger, paints it and then lets it all dry.  The process can take a week.

“It’s a lot of fun from my perspective. It’s a lot of work, but I had some extra cardboard that we had to figure out what to do with. We held a class on how to build boats and I gave some to another family who wanted to build one.”

The Ruitan club held three classes this summer to educate would-be boat builders to show them how easy it is to build one.

Gates to the regatta open at 10 a.m. and the judging of the boats starts one hour later. Judges will decide in which six categories all of the entered boats fit into: best design, best team effort, most creative, pride of the regatta, most likely to float, and, of course, most likely to sink.

Afterwards, the boat races begin with the first race for parents and their children, then a race for 15 – 50-year-olds, and then a race for those 51 and older, said Watson.

The Ruritans expect to raise $900 during the event, all of which will go to support public schools in Stafford County.

Registration costs $10 in advance, $15 on the day of the regatta.