More than a dozen concrete canoes built by college students from across the West took to the waters of Lake Nacimiento on Friday.
Even though these boats are made out of concrete, they’re built to race. The boats are about 20 feet long and the lightest canoes weigh less than 200 pounds.
Cal Poly, which is the defending National Concrete Canoe Competition champion, competed against 17 other teams in slalom and sprint races at the lake.
Cal Poly is hosting the annual American Society of Civil Engineer’s Pacific Southwest Conference this weekend, and the canoe race was just one of several competitions planned during the event. More than 1,300 students from 19 western universities and colleges are in San Luis Obispo for the conference.
The civil and environmental engineering students will be put to the test this weekend in a steel bridge competition, a GeoWall competition in which students will make retaining walls out of paper, a sustainable dam competition, and other events.
