On Sunday, April 7th the Bel Air High School Engineering Club won the Maryland State Engineering Challenge after they built a 10 foot boat that could successfully sail 600 feet through Baltimore’s Inner Harbor while carrying 40 lbs. of processed sugar.
The Engineering Club has been working every Tuesday and Thursday since the beginning of the school year to build the boat. The day before the competition they went in to test their boat. The boat sank and all of the boat’s computers were destroyed. They spent the rest of the day trying to recreate and repair the boat and eventually created a new one with little time to spare. This made the team really nervous.
Jake Davenport, Engineering Club Member said, “We were really worried because the day before, the boat sank and everything got destroyed. But we set up, and we did well.”
They arrived at 12:00 pm and set up the boat for the competition. They were one of two teams that were able to actually produce a boat that fit the qualifications. They had to submit a written report two weeks prior to the competition in order to compete and an oral report was due the day of the competition. On the day of the competition they were to be judged on the overall construction of the boat, the reliability of the boat and the demonstrated performance.
Club Sponsor Mr. Serokis said they were really happy because last year they came in last place and it was a great improvement from the year before.
Members of the Engineering Club are Jake Davenport, Amanda Tran, Ben Xu, Ryan Lynch, Alejandra Perez, Kiran Wayland, Geoff Desir and Kevin Mark. Be sure to congratulate the Engineering Club and Mr. Serokis on their great win.