Young boat racers make waves

It's almost 4 O'clock-and its time for most students in Dubai to go home. But for some middle schoolers at the American School of Dubai (ASD) in Al Barsha, it's time for another area of learning. They tie together three five-gallon plastic water bottles as they form a long floating device which will be used to take part in a boating contest. "The boat is pretty simple. It's basically a few big bottles — the bottles that you use in your water dispenser. They're just lined up at the front with a big recycled wooden board on top," Brady Watts, a sixth grader, told Gulf News. The boat, which should fit four people, will be used to compete in this year's Whatever Floats Your Boat (WFYB) contest on November 25 at Dubai Festival City. The fourth WFYB, organised by InterContinental Dubai Festival City, Festival Centre and Mourjan Marinas, is open to schools and corporations. Registration fees of Dh7,000 per team will be donated to the Emirates Wildlife Society and the Worldwide Fund for Nature. The rules are simple: build a boat made of recycled materials, float it, and race your way to victory for Mother Earth's cause. For the students, looking for recycled materials came as a very easy yet revealing task. Stay afloat "All these bags [of plastic bottles] around the room were from just one lunch buffet that one hotel did. Say, probably 800 [plastic bottles] or so from one meal. And they do these buffets three times a day, 365 days a year. So, that was really an eye-opener," Douglas Catanzaro, ASD teacher, told Gulf News. "We're doing this whole thing to make people realise how much plastic we waste all the time. If we were able to make a whole boat out of it, imagine how much the world has in total," Watts said. ASD has had noticeable changes, including the introduction of recycling, since it joined WFYB in 2008. "We used to have plastic cups by the water dispensers and now we're getting rid of those and people are bringing their water bottles more instead of buying plastic ones," said Kirstie Bosman. While ASD's gameplan for Friday is to stay afloat and row to victory, their bigger objective will always be in mind. "Our number one goal is more awareness and [for children] to grow up differently maybe than the past generation, and grow up thinking about the future more — our future generations to have a future — that's our goal," Cantanzaro said.