Dave Martin will smile and say he has no idea why certain people think of him at the mention of cardboard boats. He’ll smile even more as his wife Jane adds, with a knowing wink, “And you can tell it really bothers him that they do.”
If truth be known, Martin, 59, of rural West Dundee does know why some people associate him with cardboard boats. He may have built or helped build more of them than anyone else. And that’s a distinction of note, especially in Crystal Lake, one of cardboard boat racing’s hot spots.
Each year Crystal Lake holds the America’s Cardboard Cup Regatta, which attracts thousands of spectators and more than 100 participants who paddle, sail and sink homemade cardboard boats in a series of races. Eleven of the boats in last year’s regatta were Martin’s.
`He’s a force in cardboard boat racing,” said Frank Ward of Crystal Lake, one of the regatta’s founders.
Believe it or not, the annual Crystal Lake regatta-the ninth one is scheduled for June 26 at Crystal Lake’s Main Beach-has gone international in scope. The regatta’s Cardboard Cup, a prestigious trophy among the area’s serious racers of corrugated craft, has been won by Americans, Australians and New Zealanders.
At first blush, it may be hard to imagine anyone taking races in homemade boats fashioned from cardboard seriously. Especially when boats have come shaped like a Viking warship, a Spanish galleon, an Army tank, a beer bottle, a seaborne volcano (manned by a seven-person crew in various states of Polynesian undress), and a giant floating McDonald’s Happy Meal.
“Anyone who gets into cardboard boating soon meets a lot of fun people who like doing the same crazy thing,” said Martin, an Elgin native who has lived in the Dundee area for 16 years. “We’re all a little crazy. Maybe I’m a little crazier than most.”
Martin’s friends say he isn’t crazy, really, just devoted.
“Dave’s garage hasn’t seen a car since he got involved with cardboard boats,” said Bill Deutsch of Crystal Lake, one of Martin’s friends who is himself a cardboard boater. (Martin’s garage is his boat-building workshop.) “He’s a fanatic about the boats. He loves building and designing them.”
How much? Martin says that in the eight years since he discovered the fun and challenge of building and racing cardboard boats, he has built about 60 of them. (He has also participated in about 30 races.) He has helped others build dozens more boats. Martin and some of his fellow cardboard crafters have even given seminars on boat-building techniques.
On the Midwest’s cardboard boat racing circuit-yes, there is such a thing, with annual races in Bloomington, Rock Island, Springfield, Milwaukee and St. Louis, among other towns-Martin is one of the most-recognized figures. The most attention-getting cardboard boats at such races usually are outrageously designed and spectacularly sunk. Martin’s boats, though, all of which are kayak- or canoe-shaped, are known for elegance of design and seaworthiness.
“Dave’s boats are very fast, very responsive,” said Dale Dray of Cary, an expert canoeist whose avocation is canoe racing. Dray said his first race in a cardboard boat was at Crystal Lake’s 1991 regatta, where he paddled a boat Martin had built. “I finished in second place; Dave can build a nice boat,” Dray said.
He and Martin had met at a previous regatta, after Dray decided to see what all the hoopla was about.
“I hadn’t realized until then that there was a serious aspect to racing cardboard boats,” Dray said. “I had assumed it was just silly boats built purely for fun. I noticed Dave because he had nice boats and quite an entourage.”
Martin usually shows up at cardboard boat races with many family members, as well as with lots of boats. He and his wife have six children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild, and there are times when most of the family attends. Three of Martin’s sons, two granddaughters and two grandsons have raced with him.
Martin’s son Mark, 36, of Elgin, said he saw his father enjoying the boats and decided to join in both the building and racing of them.
“It’s something unique, and it’s a way to work with your hands and be creative,” he said. “Some people think it’s stupid, but it’s fun. My dad really enjoys it. He’s meticulous. He goes so far as to weight the front or back of the boats so that they don’t bounce so much as they’re paddled through the water.”
One of the boats Martin is most proud of is a replica of a down-river racing kayak that Dray owns. A soft-spoken man with brown hair and a beard showing gray, Martin can’t help but smile when he talks about that boat.
“It’s so sophisticated, it takes an expert like Dale to use it,” Martin said. “I could hardly get into the thing without tipping it over. It’s all curves. . . . When that boat is cruising through the water, it hardly leaves a wake. I’ve made another boat like that one but with some modifications so that an amateur like me can use it.”
If you’ve been wondering how cardboard, which absorbs water almost like a paper towel and isn’t much stronger than one when wet, can be made to float, so did Martin. He said local news reports of Crystal Lake’s first cardboard boat regatta piqued his curiosity and prompted him to try to build such a boat. Martin, who works at Middleby Cooking Systems Group in Elgin, which makes small electrical appliances, does carpentry work as a sideline, and he said he believed his knowledge of building would work to his advantage.
Not one to do things halfway, Martin’s first boat was an elaborate sailboat that took more than 400 hours of labor to complete. When Crystal Lake’s second regatta came around, he was ready.
“The boat was beautiful,” Martin recalled. “I put it in the water, and it promptly sank to the bottom of the lake. I’ve learned a bit since then.”
Martin soon got the hang of building a fast boat that can last. One of his boats, named Big Dude and built for one of his grandchildren, has lasted six years.
“That boat once fell out of the back of a truck at 50 miles an hour, and I just patched her back together,” Martin said.
Rules for building cardboard boats are straightforward. Material must be corrugated cardboard, and tape over joints cannot extend more than three inches from any joint. Only certain kinds of paints and lacquers or other sealers (epoxy resins are out) may be applied to waterproof it.
Martin usually applies two coats of a sander-sealer and three coats of polyurethane exterior varnish to his boats. The result is a water-tight craft that, from a distance, looks like it’s made of mahogany instead of cardboard.
He has also speeded up the production process. Martin said he typically spends 50 hours assembling a boat, which costs about $25.
And how are the boats for strength? Frank Ward of Crystal Lake said he and another man have stood in the middle of a Martin-built boat suspended between two chairs without bending or breaking it. “And,” Ward said, “I’m 240 pounds.”
Martin said the boats’ strength comes from following airplane design principles in their construction. “If you look at the construction of an airplane wing, it’s a structure of flimsy lightweight aluminum with a skin stretched over it,” he said. “Once the skin is attached, the wing becomes incredibly strong. Well, the boats have ribs with a skin attached to them, and the result is a lot of strength.”
One of Martin’s best friends and fiercest cardboard boat racing rivals is Charlie Birks of Crystal Lake. The two got to know one another after seeing each other at a few races. Birks, who is 20 years Martin’s junior, said they hit it off right away.
“When it comes to boat building, Dave and I come from two schools on this,” Birks said. “He puts together a boat in a week or so. He makes a pencil drawing and works from there. He’ll use his thumb for a guide on some cuts, the way a carpenter would.”
Birks, on the other hand, takes a high-tech approach. He’s an engineer at Eisenmann Corp. in Crystal Lake, and Birks and another Eisenmann employee, Glen Brown, use the company’s computer-assisted design system to design a boat and determine precise cuts and folds before the actual assembly. And whereas Martin may use his thumb as a cutting guide and will fit and trim as he goes along, Birks and Brown will use computer measurements and razor knives, band saws, jig saws or other tools for absolutely precise cuts. The whole process may take several weeks to complete.
“Being a carpenter, Dave is used to building something, and then building something more. He has to keep repairing and maintaining his boats,” Birks said. “I’m not much into maintenance. I’m more a modeler.”
While their approaches to boat building may differ, Martin and Birks share a fondness for children, family and fun. That’s why they jumped at the chance two years ago to help organize a regatta for the One Step at a Time summer camp at the campus of George Williams College near Williams Bay, Wis. The camp, for youngsters with cancer, is run by Children’s Oncology Services of Illinois, a not-for-profit organization that owns and operates Chicago’s Ronald McDonald House.
Camp organizers had heard about Crystal Lake’s regatta and asked regatta officials if they would help put on such an event for the campers. Regatta officials contacted Martin for help, he called Birks, and things took off from there. Before long, two dozen volunteers and several corporate sponsors were lined up.
“I think the people running the camp expected Dave to come up with a couple of boats, but he didn’t want any of the kids to miss out,” Deutsch said.
Instead, Martin turned his garage into something of a cardboard boat-building factory. He designed a boat and then cut up enough cardboard to build 35 duplicates. He took the kits and other necessary materials including duct tape and sealer to the camp, where teams of four youngsters each assembled the boats and took turns racing.
“The kids had a ball,” said Deutsch, one of the volunteers. “They sang a song for Dave, and he really started tearing up.”
Deutsch, who makes product videos for a Rolling Meadows firm, took several hours of videotape that people shot at the camp and edited it down to about a 20-minute video for each of the 140 youngsters who participated. Every one of the youngsters appears on the video.
Martin, Birks, Deutsch and other volunteers will be back at the camp next month to do it all over again. Martin’s garage already is filled with enough material for another 35 boats.
What has this devotion to cardboard boats done to family life in the Martin household? Martin and his wife both laugh.
“It’s divorce time when he gets started on a boat,” Jane Martin said. “By the time we get home from a race, he’s already planning his next boat. He pays more attention to his boats than he does to me.”
“Yet,” Dave Martin added, “at race time she’ll be standing on a picnic table, jumping up and down and waving her arms and hollering, `That’s my boat! That’s my boat!’ Ah, it’s great fun.”
