Students test the waters with a project designed to build their futures

Student engineering with a twist of Eastern Shore flare.

That's what the Crab boat competition was all about as seven high schools raced to see who's model crab boats were sea-worthy.

"Students had to design and build a model boat, a scaled version of a Chesapeake Dead Rise, and then they put them in the water and have different locations where they have to pick up little models of crab baskets," explains Dr. Tyler Love.

UMES assistant professor, Dr. Love, is the organizer for the Crab Boat Engineering Challenge.

He tells 47 ABC it's an outreach project to stimulate interest in science, technology, engineering and math for high school students, while tying in some eastern shore roots.

Something Stephen Decatur High School teacher Larry Ryan incorporated into a class project that his students couldn't get enough of.

"Well I love that part you know because lots of time when the bells about to ring we better stop or at the beginning at the class everyone was engaged from before the bell rang the late bell, so that was nice," says Ryan.

A project that Ryan and his students started back in October, a model of a crab boat on paper turned into a wooden motorized crab boat replica, but it wasn't all smooth sailing.
 
"It was interesting we had our ups and downs to it. It was rough at the beginning but once it got going it worked out pretty well," says sophomore student, Lars Wyatt.

Ryan adds, "We definitely made mistakes and that's part of the process. Building the keel we stopped, we started and stopped, started and stopped. We finally decided to laminate the keel and so mistakes are part of the process."

Despite the rough waters, the final piece was one they couldn't wait to show off and it proved to be a win not just for the students that worked so hard to build it, but the teachers too seeing their students loving to learn.

The students from Stephen Decatur after all their hard work went home with the Best Design award.