Concrete boats was not an entirely new concept to me, but until watching this episode of Visiting, originally aired March 2002, I never realized their construction was such a high-tech and complicated endeavor. This ASCE competition for engineering students started in 1988 and is still going on in 2024. The winners of this year’s finals competition were the University of Florida, but the California’s San Luis Obispo team came in third overall.

Each year, civil engineering students around the country compete in what might appear to be an unachievable challenge. Join Huell in Newport Dunes at the 2002 Pacific Southwest Regional Concrete Canoe Races sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) to see if 17 universities will sink or swim.

(Click on the linked image below to see the video.)