Jon Jaehnig/For the Gazette While not all boats made a successful round trip, all student had life vests and stayed close to the shallows.

HOUGHTON — Sometimes an engineer does not have access to all of the tools that they were trained to use and must make due with more basic resources.

Sometimes an engineer has to make a boat out of cardboard and duct tape.

It might not be a situation that one finds one’s self in every day, but it is a situation that over 300 students from Michigan Technological University placed themselves in on Friday afternoon for the annual cardboard boat races, which this year took place at Ray Kestner Waterfront Park in Houghton.

Cardboard boat races have been a part of Michigan Tech’s Homecoming celebrations since at least 2007. In 2008, Rochelle Spencer took to the waters with her classmates. Now, ten years later, Spencer is running the event as the Coordinator of Student Activities at Tech.

“I took a bit of a break,” said Spencer, now in her third year organizing the event.

The goal of the races is for each team of eight to twelve students to leave shore, do a lap around a buoy and return, all in a boat made out of nothing but cardboard and duct tape. The team that does this in the shortest time wins a trophy, but most of the teams have a simpler goal.

“Most of them have the goal of getting out there and not sinking,” said Spencer.

“I just don’t want to be swimming and towing the boat back,” said Andrew Malichar. “We did make a bailing bucket, just in case things go sour.”

Malichar is the representative of the team representing “Strange Crew,” a housing unit in West McNair Residence Hall. Strange Crew’s boat took an estimated fifteen hours to build. “Originally, we just had this box,” said Malichar. “Then we rigged pontoons out of 4-inch diameter cardboard piping.”

The hope is that the pontoons will help to reduce the drag that can occur between water and the flat front of the standard cardboard box. This was a problem faced by many of the teams who took to the water on Friday.

Another problem faced by the teams was a rain that began shortly before the beginning of the race. While it didn’t last long, many of the teams found themselves turning their boats upside-down so that the rain wouldn’t destroy the boats while still on land. It also meant that even those who made it around the buoys, and back, got wet.

Much to the surprise of spectators, some of the boats did make it around the buoys and back to shore without sinking, possibly because some of the contestants thought that the goal was to paddle to bridge and back. Some of the teams, however, were not so lucky. Some boats seemed to dissolve upon touching the water and a few boats didn’t even make it to the first buoy.

Three kayaks and a sheriff’s boat were waiting near the buoy in case of emergency.