Some of the best adventures you'll ever have cost less than a sandwich. Cardboard boat races are proof.
This Weekend's Sidequest: Find Your Local Regatta Season
Cardboard boat races are having a moment — or rather, they never stopped. Lakewood High School's annual Cardboard Boat Regatta gives participants five weeks to build a vessel from nothing but untreated brown cardboard and clear packing tape, then race it across a 25-yard pool with two people paddling furiously before the whole thing disintegrates. The Cedar Lake tradition in Northwest Indiana has been running for years — families and friends building watercraft that, in the organizers' own cheerful words, "most of the time end with sinking vessels."
If you're in the Carolinas, Cornelius, NC's Cardboard Boat Race returns for year two at Jetton Park on Saturday, May 2, starting at 10 a.m. — timed heats, championship round, full rules available on their site.
The logistics: Entry fees vary by event but tend to be nominal. Materials cost is genuinely low — cardboard is often free from appliance stores or grocery loading docks. Time commitment is a build session (a few hours, ideally with snacks and strong opinions about hull design) plus race day. Accessibility varies by venue; check the specific event's site. What you'll need: tape, cardboard, at least one friend who's confident in their engineering skills and one who isn't.
Bookmark These: DIY Adventure Formats Worth Stealing
Cardboard boat racing as a recurring thing. Chenango Valley Middle School just hosted its 15th annual version — which means this format has been making people laugh and sink for a decade and a half at a single school. The pattern suggests it's not hard to organize one yourself: a pool, a lake, a park pond, some willing participants, and a rule that the boat must be cardboard-only. I'd argue the sinking is the point. Nobody tells stories about the boat that stayed dry.
The broader DIY adventure principle. Trash bag sledding, cardboard boat races, backyard obstacle courses built from whatever's in the garage — these share a design philosophy: the constraint is the fun. When you can't spend your way to a better experience, you have to get creative, and creativity is where the stories come from. The gear doesn't matter. The group does.
Community Spotlight
A reader in the Pacific Northwest wrote in about their annual "Terrible Raft Race" — no motors, no kayaks, just whatever floats that you can build from materials found within a one-mile radius of the launch point. They've been running it informally for six years. No entry fee, no prizes, just a group chat that fills up every spring.
That's the whole idea. If you've got a recurring DIY adventure tradition in your area — or you're thinking about starting one — send it our way. The best sidequests are the ones people keep showing up for.