The hull design for the UNR Concrete Canoe Team started simple. While designing 2005’s All In, the hull design engineers simply perused the boats of nationally competitive teams who had canoe designs in their posted design reports. All In, though a unique design, was actually a conglomeration of characteristics whose main goal was to not burn down, fall over, and then sink into the swamp. Despite the fact that we had never seen a concrete canoe, much less designed one, All In performed admirably. With an overall finish of third in the races (out of eight), including two second places, All In was in no way an inferior first-year design.

With experience under his belt, Corbin McFarlane, the primary designer of All In, looked to improve euphoria in every aspect of performance. He quickly developed a spreadsheet to generate new designs rapidly, and produced a number of different hulls during the early phases of the 2006 project, whose primary aim was to improve turning. A first-of-its-kind method to predict turning was extremely successful, to the point that the UNR can now assess turning more easily than any other aspect of performance. For instance, analysis shows that euphoria, the 2006 canoe, actually turns slightly faster than Clemson’s Take It for Granite, despite being three feet longer (paddling being equal, of course).

Unfortunately, euphoria did not perform well in straight-line speed, despite a length-to-beam ratio of 9.8:1 and a prismatic coefficient of 0.61, almost ideal for the target cruising speed of 7 knots (in theory). euphoria’s rocker also gave the boat a tendency to wander, further contributing to slow performance in straight races.

Once again, it is the goal of the 2007 hull design team to improve upon every aspect of canoe performance simultaneously, while holding turning and stability constant. In addition to improved speed, goals for the 2007 team are to look into more advanced modeling software (there has been preliminary exploration of Michlet), and to come up with a way to quantify and predict tracking. However, it is unlikely either method will be available in time to influence the final design for 2007, because of the pressing construction schedule.