Fun at Clear Creek

One of the fun things about living on Clear Creek in Golden are all of the activities. This morning was cardboard boat races, and tonight we had a fireworks show, all thanks to the Colorado School of Mines. 

It was a lot of fun seeing what boats worked, what sank, and what just looked pretty, and what was put together at the last minute in a fit of drunken engineering madness.

Of course, half the fun was watching them make it through the rapids... 

 

And then capsize immediately after...

 

The Mystery Machine was very popular. 

 

It's April, and the water is fed by snow melt...I think it might be a bit chilly.

 

As simple as this boat was, it held up through the first rapids. 

 

This Mystery Machine was a little front-weighted. 

The look on this guy's face is priceless...

 

Their boat started with wing stubs and horizontal and vertical stabilizers. I believe it was a mockup of the Electra 10.

 

This one has some decent internal structure and a classic canoe shape.

This is all that is left of the large Mystery Machine seen above. They used concrete sonotubes. Not a bad idea, if they had more, they could have had more buoyancy.  

 

The funniest bit (or is it the saddest?) is that only one of the boats had actual naval engineering applied to it. It had ribs and structural support. It was the Arc Yacht 2, and it won... and was able to run the route not just once, but three times. Well done, guys!!!

More pictures from the event at this album. 

This was the view tonight: