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My father went to Princeton for a year for post graduate work when I was in kindergarten in the 1970's. We went to a Concrete Canoe race (like this one https://paw.princeton.edu/article/throwbackthursday-racing-c...), and for years afterward I remember him wearing a Concrete Canoe t-shirt.

It wasn't until I was much older that I realized that the impracticality of building a canoe out of concrete was the whole point of the endeavor. For years my childhood brain assumed that concrete was just one of the materials people commonly used to build boats. Want to build a canoe? Likely options are wood, animal hides, or concrete.




> For years my childhood brain assumed that concrete was just one of the materials people commonly used to build boats.

It was, depending upon availability of steel. So boat and ship were not uncommon, maybe less so with canoes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_ship

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30018296

There is a grounded concrete barge near where I grew up, now largely buried in sand dunes.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/36891793@N08/8033301173/


Our local one when I was in school was milk carton races. Those boats were quite odd.




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