Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 27, 1990 TAG: 9004270129
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: JACK CHAMBERLAIN NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Hmmm, there's a gaggle of them carrying a big, long, skinny, blue thing to Virginia Tech's Duck Pond. They're gingerly sliding it into the water. Two of them are carefully climbing in.
Hey, it's a canoe! Two college kids are actually paddling their own canoe.
Whoa, it's a concrete canoe!
Heck, anybody can manage a canoe of logs, birch bark, wood or aluminum. It takes a special daring to paddle a sidewalk.
Ah, youth. Is nothing ever easy? Is this something like the proverbial lead balloon?
No, it actually floats. Even steel floats if it's shaped like a bowl, preferably like a banana split dish.
And that's the idea behind the concrete canoes. Civil engineering students use their knowledge of stresses and strength-to-weight ratios for a racing vessel of concrete, steel reinforcing bars and wire and epoxy paints.
This is Tech's 17th consecutive year of concrete canoeing, and the students have done pretty well in regional and national competition. Last year, Tech's team won the Virginia-West Virginia regional and placed seventh among 18 boats in the national.
Tech won the regional in April and is training for the nationals in Buffalo June 23.
It's not required and they get no class credit, but the students get to wear special T-shirts, get wet and have fun.
"We're all doing it just for the challenge," said Mike Fitch, 22, a senior from Baltimore and chairman of the design and construction committee.
"For the enjoyment and the challenge," added Ian Gibson, 22, a junior from Virginia Beach. The biggest challenge was getting the paddlers into physical shape, said Gibson, chairman of the paddling committee.
They also had to design and build a concrete canoe that was light, but strong, and streamlined to glide through the water and turn on a dime.
The slender craft squatted low in the murky pond as Marie Lasik, 20, a junior from Loudoun County, and Rob Lowe, 34, a senior from Blacksburg, paddled out for a trial run this week.
"One! Two! Three! Four! Five!" Lowe shouted as he and Lasik, coordinating their paddle strokes, thrashed the vessel into motion.
"Switch!" Lowe snapped, and they switched their paddles to opposite sides without losing a stroke.
"It's heavy, but it feels good, too," Lasik said after the run. "It handles a lot better than last year's."
So, these two dozen students wearing T-shirts with "Virginia Tech Concrete Canoe Team '90" on the front, going barefoot and splashing each other, were having fun.
But they were serious about their concrete canoe, too.
"Look at that bow wave!" Lowe said from ashore as another pair of paddlers tested their skills. The gliding hull, its curved bow riding low, was pushing water aside like a barge.
"We gotta get rid of that," he said.
But Lowe seemed pleased with his teammates.
"Good turn! Good turn!" he shouted at Gibson and John Angle, 22, a senior from South Bethany Beach, Del., as they quickly executed a tight 360-degree turn.
The new and improved 1990 model, supported upside down on inflated truck inner tubes, had arrived on a long trailer. Eight students carefully lifted it like a huge crate of eggs, carried it to the edge and slipped it in among the submerged rocks.
Geese and ducks, honking and quacking, kept their distance.
The canoe, 17 feet long, weighs about 200 pounds - four times the weight of an ordinary canoe and perhaps eight times the weight of a real racing canoe.
But, hey, this is concrete - heavy, hard and brittle. The hull had to be thick enough to resist cracking and caving in, yet thin enough to hold the weight down. Tech's latest model is a quarter-inch thick, reinforced with wire mesh and steel rods.
During the six-month project, the Tech team experimented with various mixtures of "Type I Portland cement," water, fly ash, silica fume, high-range water reducer and retarder - whatever that is!
The best mix, they said, had a compressive strength of 12,000 pounds per square inch and weighed 130 pounds per cubic foot.
And to look at those crazy college kids with their concrete canoe down at the Duck Pond, one wouldn't even suspect it was so cerebral as all that.
by CNB