Creative crafts cruise at Craig cardboard competition

The lineup at the Moffat County Hot Air Balloon Festival’s Cardboard Boat Regatta might have been the most creative yet to hit the pond at Loudy-Simpson Park, and most of the zany vessels left the water upright and in one piece.

The fourth running of the regatta Saturday in Craig pitted nine teams against each other in head-to-head timed races — all in boats constructed of cardboard and other approved materials. Cash prizes were awarded for the fastest time and the most creative watercraft, while the Titanic Award was reserved for the crew whose boat suffered the most spectacular sinking. Wiper Rag Balers

Creative crafts cruise at Craig cardboard competition | CraigDailyPress.com

Before the regatta, the assortment of unusual ships — everything from a dill pickle to the Loudyness monster — began to assemble on the grass surrounding the pond. One of the first on site was an RV, complete with a Winnebago logo, a cardboard GPS device on the dashboard and a small Jeep in tow, as well as many other small details.

“My wife (Rosie) gets a lot of the credit for this,” said Gene Dorsey, who led Cuatro Estados’ effort to create the cardboard RV.

The 16-person group is a tight unit of motorhome enthusiasts, and their name references the Four Corners states — Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah — where most of the team members live when they’re not out on the road.

“We’re just an RV group out having fun like teenagers,” said crew member Susan Houston of Carlsbad, New Mexico.

According to Dorsey, the group’s wagon master, planning for this event had been in the works for about a year before the regatta. Having never done an RV rally in Northwest Colorado, Dorsey wanted to target the area and he recalled going online in search of events to find out about the balloon festival.

“That’s how I heard about it, and then I saw the regatta and decided that we’re a motorhome group so we had to have a motorhome pulling a jeep, and that’s what we did,” Dorsey said.

Sitting on the shore next to the RV was a Pirates of the Caribbean ghost ship, a U.S. Navy ship and a pretty sleek 1958 Corvette.

“Oh, they’re going to win,” Dorsey said of the competition before the race. “We have no hope of winning the fastest. I mean, motorhomes never go fast, right? You guys always get upset at the motorhomes on the mountain passes. We don’t take offense … but we think that we’re going to be able to stay afloat.”

Inspired by his family’s 1958 Corvette, Iver Ringel of Golden and his family built the cardboard replica to 41% scale of the real car. With about five build days, they went the extra mile on all the details — from the steering wheel to the door handles and an emblem on the trunk and license plates for paddles.

Another team gravitated toward an “Alice in Wonderland” theme with daughter Andi Carr filling the role of Alice and mom Michelle Landis serving as the White Rabbit, with their boat designed to look like the Cheshire Cat. While they’ve watched the regatta before, this was the first time competing in it for both of them.

“I thought it would be really fun and creative,” said Carr, who picked the theme for their boat this year while attending last year’s regatta.

Landis said construction took more work than she originally thought it would, and they used multiple layers of cardboard, liquid nails and caulking. They painted the boat twice with a base coat and two more times with the top coat before going over that twice more with coats of vinyl.

“I really love it,” Carr said of the final product. “I do wish the head was a bit bigger, but it was too late to change it.”

The “Alice in Wonderland” boat wasn’t the only one with close connections to its creators.

A cardboard replica of the USS Anchorage paid tribute to the marine transport ship Anthony Pogline served on when he was enlisted. The group was competing in their third regatta and Anthony’s son, Conner Pogline, said they worked on the boat for about two months.

Their hard work certainly showed with the immense amount of detail they put into the craft, from the cardboard helicopters sitting on the landing pads to the plastic figurines of sailors glued onto the deck.

With four people in the boat — including the grandfather and his son, Connor, and grandchildren River and Stetson — they had the largest crew of the day. Before the race, Anthony said the group hasn’t sank yet at the regatta, and Saturday was no different, as the family completed the course and won third place for design.

In first place for design, the duo of Ella Fross and Alahna Bailey went with a ghost ship theme from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” They called it, “The Flying Phantom.” Rounding out the top three, Cuatro Estados won second for design.

However, the fastest team was In a Pickle. With balloon pilot Don Dougherty spearheading planning and construction — he was really into pickle beer last year when the boat was in the concept phase — his wife Jen Dougherty and friend Pam Neal piloted it around the buoys.

“They did (it) really fast, faster than anyone else by far,” said volunteer Randy Looper, who has been working the regatta since it first set sail four years ago. “It was amazing. In fact, that was the fastest time I’ve ever seen because normally it’s three to six minutes.”

For the group of friends, including Pam’s husband, Scott, who also chipped in, the balloon festival and all that’s wrapped around it is “just the most fun weekend ever.”

Images from the Cardboard Boat Regatta on Saturday, Aug. 5, 2023, during the Moffat County Hot Air Balloon Festival. Eli Pace/Craig Press

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Creative crafts cruise at Craig cardboard competition | CraigDailyPress.com