Yesterday was a beautiful day throughout the five boroughs of New York City, and an especially great day for navigating DIY and 3D-printed radio-controlled boats on the Red Hook Channel in the Upper New York Bay! The 2nd annual Red Hook Regatta is an initiative of Pioneer Works, a nearby non-profit arts center and event space. The Regatta supplies makers with some components and parts to assemble a DIY or 3D-printed boat, to be radio-controlled from the beach while attempting to deliver ‘cargo’ in the form of foam blocks to nearby piers. The distance from the shore to the piers was quite far consider the scale of the boats (less than 2′ in length). Any boat that ran aground or died in the water was retrieved by a human in a kayak.

Boats were divided into two camps: DIY & 3D-printed; the latter is obvious and the former were basically anything goes, including a toy converted into a vessel, a mostly-foam (I think) boat, and even a ‘trash boat’ that consisted of trash vacuum-sealed in some sort of container (it didn’t last long!). The event mostly consisted of 3D-printed boats, some of which can be seen below.

Shoutout: Adafruit’s own Dano Wall (with our fabrication department) who competed with his 3D-printed boat Infinity Wake! (see photo below)

Support 'crew' assembling a wearable (see the hole in the middle!) ship – just for fun!

Pioneer Works 3D-printed and gave a rudder for each entrant who wanted one.

Boat builders were free to decorate their crafts 😉

I like this retro-futuristic design, bottom-view.

A giant solar panel powered one quadrant of the event!

Makers fine-tuning their ships before launch surrounded by on-lookers.

Adafruit's own Dano (fabrication) and his highly competitive boat!

One of the boat's jet-like tail designs.

The 'cargo' each ship had to carry were foam blocks wrapped with slotted flat bar.

A 'red hook' fishing hook with magnets on the bottom would retrieve each ship's cargo block.

3D-printed ships at sea!

One ship heading for the 2-point pier, with the Statue of Liberty in the background!

Boat-makers standing on the beach navigating their RC boats!

A DJI Phantom drone flew overhead recording video to be published later.

And lastly here’s a quick clip showing how the boats delivered ‘cargo’ which got retrieved by the magnetized ‘red hook.’

UPDATE: Thanks to Alicia for sending in these great pics of Uttam Grandhi and Kirill Shevyakov from team La Cornuta who tied for 1st! Their boat has some great design work on the hull!

David Sheinkopf from Pioneer Works presents the two 1st place winning teams on stage after the completed heats. Congrats to all the winners!