Our latest blog reports on an inland event. Last Sunday the Linlithgow
Union Canal Society (LUCS) held its annual Fun Day which takes place each year
on the third Sunday in August. This saw around a thousand people watch the
annual cardboard raft race which last year featured a cardboard
tribute to our ship. Sadly no paddlers featured this year.
The rules require boats to be constructed from cardboard in
any form but not be waterproofed. String and adhesive tape may be used only to
tie and sew the boat together. The boats have to be manually propelled around a circular course of roughly 100 metres whilst rescuing a plastic duck from the jaws of a crocodile. The winner did this in 1 minute 15 seconds.
As can be seen it was all great fun - even for those who
sank. Of the twenty entries, ten stayed afloat. Whilst steel hulls are a clearly
preferable design, the LUCS event perhaps shows that cardboard vessels could be
a useful design exercise for budding naval architects.
As LUCS supported our 2013 evening charter it seems
reasonable to give them a plug on our blog. LUCS boasts the only canal museum in
Scotland, is open at weekends until the end of September and offers a self-drive
hire boats. Further information is available at http://www.lucs.org.uk/
Maybe a visit to LUCS is an option for those lost for
something to do once our paddler heads south.
Report by David Shirres
