Welcome to the art of cardboard boat building — a long-standing Husky tradition that made its inaugural splash at East Hall, Michigan Technological University’s newest residence hall, this academic year.
A future civil engineer, a robotics engineer in training, and a fledgling data scientist circle a massive slab of cardboard in the ground-floor multipurpose room of East Hall, strategically applying strips of duct tape — in a shade called Baby Pink — to the bottom of what will become a boat they have already christened Unicorn.
Propped on four rolling carts, Unicorn is about 18 feet long and three and a half feet wide. A nearby whiteboard details the prep work completed before a single piece of cardboard was sacrificed. Sketches include cross sections, bow angles, and the team’s signature innovation: honeycomb-like pieces they’ve dubbed “best-a-gons,” developed through trial and error in an effort to maximize flotation.
It’s a golden Thursday in mid-September. Outside the workroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows, a few students play a late-afternoon pickup football game on the lush green lawn. Inside, the trio of Huskies laboring over their amalgamation of tape and cardboard have no time for games. Deadline looms. It’s the final day to build before the annual Cardboard Boat Races, a Michigan Tech tradition held on the Friday of Homecoming weekend since 2005.
Judging by the visible expanse of bare cardboard waiting for tape and the lack of both port and starboard sides for the vessel, Unicorn has a long way to go before she’s ready to set sail.
Watch the Cardboard Boat Races at Michigan Tech from Build to Finish
Welcome to the art of cardboard boat building — a long-standing Husky tradition that made its inaugural splash at East Hall, Michigan Technological University’s newest residence hall. Meet the East Hall crew of the Good Ship Unicorn. See how she’s engineered and built. Then watch her take to the water in a race that’s equal parts design challenge and paddling prowess.
The ship’s build team includes other Huskies who assisted with Unicorn’s design, but just three stalwarts have shown up for the overnight sprint: Vince White, a civil engineering major; robotics engineering major Caleb Huibregtse; and Valentin Ravotti, studying data science.
They appear undaunted by the lack of helping hands.
“Everybody wants to ride in it but nobody wants to build,” says White, methodically tearing and applying tape to the seams of the boat bottom.
Unicorn is mostly composed of multiple TV and mini refrigerator boxes taped end-to-end, along with sundry smaller boxes and scraps hoarded from Michigan Tech’s 2025 Move-In Days in August. That’s when most residential living groups procure their cardboard, says White. The types of cardboard available at Move-In aren’t uniform across floors, houses, and buildings, he notes. The specificity is like a form of dorm DNA.
“You can kind of see the different personalities of the students and their buildings; there’s a little bit of variance you can see in the cardboard, if it’s exposed,” he says.
But the secret to racing success is to conceal the cardboard as much as possible. The waterproofing properties of duct tape will be all that stands between Unicorn’s crew and ignominious sinking. The boats can only be constructed of cardboard, and duct tape, glue, epoxy, and caulking are the only allowed materials for seams.
Like many Husky purists, the East Hall crew is sticking with duct tape as Unicorn’s sole adhesive.
As White puts it, the competition is a quest for both “beauty and survival.” Points are awarded for creativity, ingenuity, and adherence to the Homecoming theme. According to the official Cardboard Boat Races rules, duct tape and cardboard are also the only items that can be used for decorating. The 2025 theme was “Where the Wild Huskies Are”— homage to Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are.
Baby Pink wasn’t the East Hall crew’s intentional color choice. “It was what they had left at Walmart,” says Huibregtse. But the color led to another innovation — one involving a seven-foot-long cardboard tube, the kind used for rolls of paper or fabric, which the build team had originally envisioned as a mast.
Huibregtse brandishes what has become the boat’s piece de resistance before angling the tube out from the front of the boat. It practically shouts “Unicorn!”
The trio continues discussing rules and requirements. Punctuating their conversation is a steady soundtrack of peeling and ripping — a reminder that no matter its color, duct tape makes the same distinctive sound when torn from the roll.
"Get the boat legal and tape tape tape!"
It’s often said that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that’s equally true for Huskies. In Unicorn’s case, when the bottom of the boat is duct-taped as thoroughly as supplies allow, the football players on the lawn obligingly take a break from their game to help flip the approximately 300-pound ship. Taping continues topside as the rolls are exhausted one after the other. Will there be enough duct tape? Can there ever be enough duct tape to keep Unicorn afloat?
No Visible Cardboard, Top Secret Plans
The next afternoon, hundreds of racers and onlookers gather at Chassell’s Centennial Park under cloudy skies and a light drizzle. The race locale has shifted over the decades between Houghton and Hancock. In recent years, the Cardboard Boat Races have been held at the waterfront park in Chassell, which is situated on a cove just off the Keweenaw Waterway. Buses shuttle Huskies from campus to the site, and race teams enlist friends with trucks to get their boats delivered safely.
In the staging area, many of the competitors drape their boats with blankets or tarps to keep them dry. Of the 38 registered to enter, 18 have shown up to race.
Teams racing in the residence hall and student organization categories most often operate in an organic crunch-time mode. But at the fraternity and sorority level, vessels come together more strategically, and crafty competitors stockpile institutional knowledge and tricks of the trade to hand down to incoming members. Consistently winning chapters, including Sigma Tau Gamma and Phi Kappa Tau, guard their cardboard boat design and construction formulas as closely as Winter Carnival snow statue secrets.
“Unfortunately, I am not able to speak much on how exactly we build our cardboard boat,” writes John Raubinger, Sigma Tau Gamma president and mechanical engineering technology major, in response to an email asking about the fraternity’s process. “What I am able to say is we have a sketch that we use when building our boat. Unfortunately, the sketch is a secret as well.”
A similar query receives no response from Phi Kappa Tau, but team members on-site the day of the race confirm that their approach begins with a schematic on engineering graphing paper and ends with “straight-up duct tape.” The fraternity also benefits from the largesse of alumni Austin Gongos and Nate Ackerman, 2018 mechanical engineering graduates and Chicken Tramper Ultralight Gear co-founders. The pair donates specialty cardboard, like heavy-duty tubes, that adds extra reinforcement and architectural interest to the vessel.
On race day, the boat crafted by Phi Kappa Tau and Delta Zeta’s joint team boasts an elaborate horned figurehead, a Husky Spirit emblem, and the race theme — and defeats all competitors, going on to earn first place overall in the 2025 competition.
Back at the starting line, hopes remain high in the residence hall category, as contestants prepare for the start of the race.
On Your Mark, Get Set — Go!
The East Hall crew is closest to the beach. Unicorn is one of three boats scheduled to race in the very first heat because one of the crew members needs to leave for work. Unicorn’s horn pokes proudly from the bow of the ship, modified with a cardboard-crafted rabbit and fitted with Ravotti’s GoPro camera. In the boat interior, strips of not-pink tape indicate a resourceful hunt for additional reinforcement materials. The team of three builders has grown to 10 crew members, all ready to take up their paddles and steer the vessel to victory.
Unicorn’s crew autographs the bottom of the boat before slipping into the provided life jackets, which are required safety equipment. Amy Hjerstedt, assistant director of Student Leadership and Involvement, says Cardboard Boat Races event organizers collaborate with Tech’s Department of Public Safety and Police Services. Michigan Tech’s Emergency Medical Services team is on standby for the event. Offshore, the Houghton County Sheriff Department Marine Patrol vessel and kayakers from Michigan Tech’s Outdoor Adventure Program float in the slightly choppy brown water, several yards away from the race marker, an orange buoy, where racers will make their turn to head back to shore.
The crowd grows. Chassell’s main street is lined with vehicles. Hundreds of families up for Homecoming weekend at Tech gather behind the rope cordoning off the beach. A sponsor hands out sandwiches. Blizzard T. Husky high-fives fans. Umbrellas and hoods go up as the rain persists and temperatures drop into the high 50s. But the racers, most barefoot and wearing shorts, are hyped. There’s no shivering. They don’t seem to feel the cold. Ravotti wades in, testing the water, and proclaims it warm.
Team Unicorn’s cheers intensify tenfold as they position their craft at the water’s edge, shouting, “We’re not going down!”
The start whistle sounds at 4 p.m. Paddles at the ready, the East Hall crew launches Unicorn into the water. Each crew member climbs aboard successfully, and together the team furiously paddles toward the buoy. They open a huge lead over the other two boats in the heat, one of which collapses almost as soon as it enters the water.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go, more power, more power!” Unicorn’s racers urge each other on, paddles cutting through the water in tandem.
The sides of the vessel are crumpling. About three inches of water pours in.
“We’re sinking, we’re sinking!” the team shouts, then rallies. “Come on! We are East Hall! We will not break, we will not sink — we will survive!”
But Team Unicorn is headed for trouble. The boat hangs up on the buoy, and they lose their lead. But not their East Hall spirit, as they finally extricate themselves and paddle back to a second-place finish.
Unicorn is waterlogged but intact as they haul her ashore, accompanied by another round of cheers. “We are East Hall! We will not break. We will survive!”
Now double her weight, Unicorn is hoisted into a waiting dumpster. But before her crew says farewell, East Hall Student Association President Connor Nunn detaches her horn — a memento for the hardy band of cardboard castaways who are the first to compete for their hall. It doesn’t feel anything like defeat, but more like history in the making.
“We are hoping, as a new hall, to build our own stories,” says White. “If only we were able to make it around the buoy! Could have been an easy top finish. We have next year, though.”
Michigan Technological University is an R1 public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, and is home to nearly 7,500 students from more than 60 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan's flagship technological university offers more than 185 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.
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