Third Annual Great Lake Erie Boat Float – By Daryl Davis

One of the several annual bad weather

events in Northeast Ohio is the Boat Float

sponsored by the Cleveland Museum of

Natural History. Boat float participants

race their boats 300 feet out and back off

Edgewater Park beach in competition for

three decorated plastic bottle trophies.

This was FOWL’s second year in the boat

float. In 2010 we came in second and

this year we decided that we could win.

So Alan Tomko began acquiring prime

materials and he and Ray Stewart

devised a pontoon assembly they figured

would hold at least 350 pounds. Two

weeks before the race, on a beautiful

warm sunny day I tapped model boat

builder Scott Bucher and we headed out

to Alan’s and joined Helen Kopp to finish

assembling the perfect boat – which Scott

fitted with two low beach chairs, and

braced with lengths of pvc and wood from

a fence. We had a lot of fun and Alan and Patricia Cook made a fine dinner from the garden.

If you ask me that was the best part of the whole event. Two weeks later the temperature dropped 25 or 30 degrees and it

rained hard and long. Somehow this always happens at those “must do” events, like Earth Day on April 20th. We got to

Edgewater Park at 8:00 am wading through water so deep I was soaked to the knees. A moment or so before 10:00 the

thunder and lightening quit, the rain slowed down to mist, and the race began. Our brave paddlers, Helen Kopp and Scott

Bucher made an amazing showing but two young guys with a much less engineered craft pushed ahead to first place at the

last 50 feet. So FOWL II came in 2nd again.

So why do we do it?

This race and design competition is held to call attention to the shocking amount of plastic junk that

should be recycled but is usually used once and thrown overboard. A 2008 study of 671 fish concluded

that 35 percent of them were contaminated with plastic.

Marine scientist Marcus Eriksen who inspired the Boat Float says, "Plastic absorbs pollutants and

releases chemicals in the fish that we eat." Big fish eat little fish and they both absorb the chemicals and

accidentally ingest the bits of plastic.

This is not good for us but it is really bad for the wildlife.

Anyone who has spent time on the

Lake Erie shore has seen the extent

of the problem. The shoreline at

Wendy Park on Whiskey Island is

probably the worst I’ve ever seen -

ankle deep in refuse and most of it

is plastic. Mixed in with the plastic

are dead and dying fish and birds.

One gull was immobilized in a

morass of plastic crap and was

probably full of it. I would have

made a move to free it but this bird

was almost dead, and it did not even

react to my curious dog who was

only about 3 feet away from it on the end of her leash.

We have to do something – maybe we have to do everything.

Figure 1 Please avoid single-use containers whenever possible.