TRAVERSE CITY — The National Cherry Festival is celebrating its 100th anniversary — and bringing back a competition that hasn’t been around for more than a quarter of a century.
The Milk Carton Boat Regatta is a competition to create boats with milk cartons, orange juice cartons and water jugs. The boat must be under 10 feet long and 10 feet wide.
After the boat is built, participants race the boat to the finish line.
Event Coordinator Brett Fedorinchik said that the event was primarily for the Traverse City community.
“It’s a local’s event and really gives locals an opportunity to do something really fun and experience making memories at the National Cherry Festival,” Fedorinchik said.
Yesterday, 14 separate groups competed to get first in multiple types of races.
Doug Murdick’s Fudge teams competed in four races and won both the three-man and four-man races.
Their cook, Evan Endress, was on both winning teams and described their process. When the shop was approached by a festival representative about the competition, Endress said they realized they already had all of the materials, they were just recycling them.
“We thought, well, we’ll make kind of a pontoon catamaran boat, and we’ll put the big fudge box on it for Doug,” Endress said.
The Milk Carton Boat Regatta started at the festival in 1973, and was created by Arlene and Wes Nelson. It was popular throughout the 1980s until it completely stopped a decade later, according to Fedorinchik.
Their children, Darryl and Karen, were both in attendance and volunteered for the competition.
Darryl said that their parents would have been a little stricter on the regulations but overall are most likely smiling down on the competition.
“He would have loved this because it’s exactly what he envisioned,” he said.
Darryl Nelson used to compete before the competition ended in the late ‘90s. The Grand Traverse County commissioner recalled a story from when he built a boat with his friend Mike Mitertsma.
“We called it Fulton’s Folly,” he said. “It was a paddle wheel, and we had a shaft, and there was a pipe we were turning, and I still have a scar on my leg from that particular one.
“It’s a good thing there weren’t sharks in the water.”
Karen Nelson said that there was a boat during this year’s competition that reminded her of her family.
“My favorite boat was the milkman boat, with the two milkmen on it, because our dad was the milkman,” she said. “It was our family joke that we all look like the milkman, so that kind of made my brother and I both kind of crack up seeing that sign.”
