Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Regatta de funk

You might have heard of the Couchboat.

Now, behold Couchboat Two, with two couches!















All credit to the illustrious Laura Stupin for the brilliance to put a couch on a pair of surfboards to go on the Charles river for last year's fourth of July celebration. This year, Daf and I spruced up the old surfboard chassis to take two couches and a whole bunch of extra flotation.

And by "spruced up", I meant "worked like dogs to rebuild". We designed and built a wooden space frame onto the boards that "securely" held our couches, and a system of airtight containers mounted on the underside of the boards to keep us buoyant. Couchboat Two's top speed, going downstream and with four people paddling: half a mile per hour.















Seven of us floated down the river on the mightiest and slowest of all couchboats on the Charles that day, and watched the fireworks just a couple of hundred metres from the barge they were fired from, drinking brews, eating strawberries, chips and hommus, singing sea shanties and talking the talk of pirates. Ah, simpler times.

To get home, we offloaded most of the cru at the MIT boat dock, and Daf and I unmounted the flotation from the underside of the boat as we floated in the water (itself a mighty effort) and then paddled a mile upstream to our launch site.

With lots of help, we carried the boat and couches home, we managed to finish at 3 or 4 am. We were completely exhausted and worn out, but extremely pleased with the success of our mission.


Next year, look out for the grand premiere of Loungeboat.

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