Brains, brawn combine for concrete canoe race

Students didn’t take floating lightly when they were trying to sail concrete across Campus Lake.

SIUC’s student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineering was host to 11 other universities throughout the weekend’s Steel Bridge and Concrete Canoe Competitions.
Thursday was a steel bridge competition, followed by judging of the concrete canoes on Friday. But the races on Saturday were the highlight of the weekend for many of the students.

“It was intense,” said Rochelle Brazas, an SIUC freshman from Hampshire studying geography. “It’s basically what I expected--excitement.”

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville won four of the five races, giving them the overall title and sending them to the University of Alabama for the national competition held in late June.

The five races included the women’s and men’s two-person race, the women’s and men’s three person endurance race and a combined race, with two men and two women rowing the same canoe.

The University of Kansas won the men’s endurance race.

Team captain Rebecca Brazas, older sister of Rochelle, said SIUC’s team practiced with the metal canoes at Campus Lake, but never the concrete one.

“Some teams build two canoes so they have one extra to go practice in. We didn’t have time or the finances to go and build a second canoe,” Rebecca Brazas said. “You can tell Edwardsville really practiced because they went really straight and fast.”

Rebecca Brazas, a junior from Hampshire studying civil engineering, said the rules for size, shape and materials of the canoe dramatically changed from previous years, making the process of getting a concrete canoe to race across the lake more complicated.

“That’s what engineers do. We’re trained to design things based on the requirements,” said Sanjeev Kumar, an associate professor of civil engineering. “We have designed these canoes in such a way that even though they are made of concrete, they will float.”
All teams were required to use a recyclable material to incorporate the event’s theme of environmentalism.

The SIUC’s concrete canoe team used rubber as its recyclable ingredient.

Rebecca Brazas said the “Seadawgs” had already chosen pirates as the team’s theme when they began to mix the rubber fragments with other materials. The rubber turned the mixture an unusual black color, inspiring the canoe’s name of “Black Pearl.”

Rebecca Brazas said having a consistent shape requirement left everyone with the same problem of figuring out how to steer the canoes.

Jose Hernandez, a senior from Venezuela studying civil engineering, said the Seadawgs’ only problem was turning around.

“Our idea was just to go straight and to use a lot of power. I thought we were doing well and then I look up again and I see the other teams were already turning,” Hernandez said.

Rebecca Brazas said it is common for at least one canoe to have floating problems. She said one of the competitor’s from University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s punched a hole in the canoe when she tried to get in for the very first race. Oklahoma State University’s canoe was the first to capsize.

Rochelle Brazas said her strategy for racing was going faster than everyone else. Hernandez said his was to row from the knees to get more power.

“A boat flipped over, that’s all I saw. We weren’t really paying attention to them. We were focused on the buoy — the wrong buoy at first,” Rochelle Brazas said. “We definitely could’ve gotten first if we hadn’t gone to the wrong buoy. That’s for sure.”

Figuring out how to get the canoes to float was not a fast process, Rebecca Brazas said. The team went through 20 different test batches before finding the right mix.

Rebecca Brazas said the tests to find the right mix were measured by the unit weight of the concrete. Concrete used for roads has a unit weight of 150 pounds per cubic foot; water’s weight is 62.4.

"There’s calculations we do to test for the unit weight, so once we find a mix that’s unit weight is below water, we know that it will probably float,” Rebecca Brazas said.

In order to help keep the canoe afloat, the team put foam in the ends of the canoe.
Rebecca Brazas said the event cost more than $40,000 to put on, which was raised through fundraisers done by SIUC’s chapter of ASCE.        

“It was a lot of work, working with every department on the university, from parking to the Rec Center to the provost to get everybody to coordinate and ... contacting all the universities to have them come,” Rebecca Brazas said.

Kumar said the hosts for the conference rotate from school to school. This is the first time in ten years SIUC has hosted. The groups of students who created the concrete canoe and the steel bridge were also the ones that organized the event, Kumar said.

“I talked to many faculty who came with the other teams and they are so pleased with every arrangement here. The hospitality of our students, our departments and SIU is wonderful,” Kumar said.