Longview has an annual cardboard boat regatta, and I wanted to participate this year.

The theme was Christmas in July, and my daughter Chloe's favorite movie is Nightmare Before Christmas, so of course we had to do that.

I had my neighbor Scott and my son Jevon help with the construction.

My wife Tara made the most awesome paper mache zero:

The boat ended up being over 16 feet long:

And of course I had to surprise Chloe with being Jack the day of (this is actually ella in the picture).

Chloe and me before boat launch:

The boat ended up being too long and unstable (we had 4 adults and 2 kids in it). Amazingly we made it through two of the races, but ended up being dead last in the second race as the boat had a turn radius of about a mile, and on the second race, started to turn into a squishy accordion in the front.

Thankfully we were able to save Zero.

Video: https://youtu.be/Sad-diKLrV4?t=1508 First race at 25min and second at 1:05