2013 Arroyo Cup

By Tony Girolami

The Arroyo pond was the site of the 2013 Arroyo Cup model boat regatta which tool place on Saturday, Sept. 20. The event, sponsored by the Rancho Santa Fe Outdoors Club (ROC), featured 18 entrants each demonstrating unique design ideas and highly creative construction methods. The only restriction imposed on the participants: no battery or gas-operated motors.

Prior to taking to the water, the boat builders displayed their creations to the assembled crowd of friends and parents who delighted in the creative design and material use concepts. From the start it was obvious that the imagination was in full flex. The largely “kid-made” vessels displayed a whole array of propulsion designs from classic sails, to solar powered motors, from rubber band propellers to rocket engines. Yes. Rocket engines.

The hull designs ranged from wooden catamarans, a mono-hulled Greek trireme with multiple plastic oarsmen. Top design honors were awarded to Trevor Hand for his ingenious boat “Thunder Lightning” consisting of a paint pan duct taped to two plastic rain gutter pontoons and powered with an Estes rocket taped to the middle of the boat.

No event would be complete without the list of honorees. Here are a few folks who deserve special recognition:

•Best Design: Trevor Hand for “Thunder Lightning”

•Most Original Name: Sophia Fox for her boat “Kate Lon Edis Pudah”

•Distance Award: Anaclaire Fox for “Rocketeer”

• Classic Disaster Award: Owen and Jewel Perry for their a classic sloops that loved to capsize

• Erie Canal Award: Lila for “Purple Power” a steam powered, olive oil-spilling “putt-putt” boat reminiscent of barge traffic on the Erie Canal.

• Arroyo Cup 2013 and Ecology Award winner – Jake Malter’s “Turtle Boat” as it sipped solar energy, putting to the finish line while simultaneously collecting large swaths of algae in his propeller.

Courtesy photos