Hey there!

In 2014, our fourth-quarter budget cuts meant the GE Aviation holiday party got pushed to February.

We needed a team-building activity. I found a "Build-A-Boat" event, but it cost thousands of dollars.

So I did what any self-respecting engineer would do. I built my own version.

Cardboard from the office move. Duct tape. Plastic tablecloths. Four lanes in the GE Fitness Center pool. Four hours on a Friday afternoon.

The Float-A-Boat Regatta was born.

I had a hypothesis: instead of building a traditional boat with walls and a hull, I could build a surfboat — a raft-like platform from cardboard trusses. All volume displacement. No walls to breach.

Nobody on my team wanted to be the first rider.

I graciously volunteered.

It worked perfectly.

We won every race. Our boat was genuinely unsinkable. The Battle Boat Twins stood on it afterward. Someone surfed it briefly.

And because I am who I am, I documented the event in Design Record Book format with official lessons learned:

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"Some great structural materials are crap if not protected from the environment." (The green team forgot to tape the seam underneath their boat.)

Consider your failure modes in design. (The red team's boat was fine for one rider. It buckled with two.)

Think outside the box. (The surfboat won because it wasn't a better boat — it was a completely different approach.)

That one afternoon launched a decade-long design obsession. That surfboat concept eventually became the platform I trained my golden retrievers to surf on. Which became the buoyancy experiment I taught to Girl Scouts. Which became the second book in my Putney Hicks Inventor Adventures series.

One afternoon. One idea. A chain of consequences that's still unfolding.

That's what problem-solving looks like in real life.

And it's still evolving.

This past Sunday in Virginia, we built the latest version with my great-nephews Finn and Dutch...​
This version started with plastic cardboard templates, for the top and bottom, and we worked really hard to get the truss structure level. We also shaped the nose and added short vertical trusses to fill out the structure and provide support in the semi-circular front of the boat.

The difference this time? Dutch was able to stand up on it! It was also easier to steer. Both Finn and Dutch zoomed around the pool on it (laying down or kneeling on it).

Dutch helping to arrange the cardboard tube truss structure.

Finn helping to tape the trusses to the plastic cardboard template.

Dutch standing on the surfboat!

More next week,

Cheers,

Marsha & Mooney

P.S. We are cranking through the STEM experiments... Papier-mache volcano (making & painting), dry ice volcano, slime (huge favorite), cardboard boat, 2D wind tunnel / marbling (first time and huge favorite!), egg drop, whirligigs, plus coke & mentos with a new gizmo to release the mentos securely. We had the highest geysers ever.

The boys did get a bit wet.

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