Raingutter Regatta

This year Alan is a Tiger Cub in scouts!! Yesterday we had our first big scouting event, the Raingutter Regatta. The boys sand and paint their own boats and race them down a raingutter filled with water. They blow behind their sails through a straw to make the boats go. Eddie is having a rough time feeling left out because you have to be in first grade to be a scout. We got him a kit to build the boat with Alan to be a pretend scout.

Here Eddie and Alan are doing the sanding.

Alan is doing more sanding here.

Next comes the painting. Alan chose to use 3 colors which requires a lot of time waiting for paint to dry!!

While we waited for the paint to dry Alan decorated his sail with some retired scouting stamps in Mommy's office.

Here is Alan with his completed boat. He named it "The Promise" because we were learning the Cub Scout Promise on the way to the race preparing for next week's meeting.

Alan and Daddy registering for the race.

They let Eddie have is own private race to test out the gutters while registration was going on.

Daniel helps Eddie and Joey test the gutters.

Alan at the starting line

During the race

The Finish Line The race was double elimination so the still pictures were from Alan's first race. Here is a video of Alan's second race.

Unfortunately he lost both races. Eddie sat on the bleachers and behaved like an angel despite all the chaos of kids (especially Joey) running around like hooligans. To celebrate Eddie's good behavior he got to pick the place for lunch. The scouts had 3 times as many Tiger Cubs show up to race as expected so Daniel ended up staying to help run the rest of the event and I took the kids to Burger King for lunch.