What looked to be 4 competitors first carved out and decorated over the course of (i think) about 90 minutes (we didn't directly witness this part, just saw it from across the creek). Then, at 2:00pm they were off, and paddling like hell (I'm unsure as to whether a regatta is technically supposed to be a sail-based boat race, but these pumpkins were paddled). The second-place racer had (seemingly almost immediately) fallen out of his pumpkin and was dragging it along behind him as it filled up with more and more water,
The racer in last place throughout the entirety of the heat tried to sink the first-place racer's pumpkin by paddling water in their general direction while approaching the turnaround (an old tire secured in place a little ways upstream from the waterfall {or whatever a stream-wide, man-made drop of 5 feet or so is called when created for urban [or ex-urban] planning purposes}).
Like many Midwestern Gen-X boys, my first regatta I'd ever was the Raingutter Regatta (which my child's ears always heard as the "ranguddaregada" - exactly none parts of the words made any sense to me whatsoever). Even when I competed in this event for the proto-fascist organization I had been encouraged to join by my friends' parents (my parents never discouraged me from it, but certainly weren't going to actively support me in my taking part), it didn't occur to me that the mini-sailboats we had constructed* were racing down rain gutters. I just saw them as a flattened version of the racetracks we used for the Pinewood Derby** filled with water...
I'm not sure exactly of the other regattas (I feel like one was a Red Bull sponsored event... I know I went to a Red Bull FlugTag at Miami Beach when I was living there, but I think there was a boating event put on by them maybe in Minneapolis? {this was before they started sponsoring all those soccer teams, and needed to keep themselves in the public consciousness through other means}), but I know there've been a few.
A gathering of angels
Appeared above my head
They sang to me this song of hope
And this is what they said
They said, come sail away, come sail away
Come sail away with me (lads)
Come sail away, come sail away
Come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away
Come sail away with me (baby)
Come sail away, come sail away
Come sail away with me
Imagine if you encountered a gathering of fracking angels, and that was all they said... really disappointing.
*assembled
**Now Pinewood Derby cars - that is some true function v. form designs there, I tell ya'. In my day, I constructed 2 of them, the first was all about form. My buddy Choett helped me paint it (that is, probably, he did it all, because he was a damn good artist, and I routinely got made fun of in Art Class by Mr. Wescott in front of the whole class). It was all pink with black racing stripes, and had its name "Pink Panther" painted on the front. I think I added the number, which was wonky. My second was all function, with the help of Corbin and some random guy he knew who had a drill press in his garage. We drilled right down the middle, and curved the front so there was a hole straight through from front to back, and awesomely aerodynamic. Then that guy melted the ball bearings I was supposed to add for weighting the car, and put it in the middle hole, all flat. It was perfect (except, when I got to race day their scale measured it differently than ours at home had, and the race organizers had to reach into my car with pliers, and pull out some of the metal that had melted in their, thus messing up the weight distribution we had designed, and plugging up the hole at the front and ruining the aerodynamic design. It's totally fine, though, I'm not bitter or anything...)
